Portfolio Yen Pang Chou
Table of Content Hotel Dining Hall - ARTS Group Internship Anlong Site Survey - ARTS Group Internship Gridshell Structure Museum of Modern Art NS Lunenburg Float House Case Study - Maison de Verre Case Study - Barcelona Pavilion Structural Design - Twisted Column Collapsible Origami
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Hotel Dining Hall ARTS Group Internship
Rendering and Site Plan by ARTS Group 0
5
10m
Location: Suzhou, Jiangsu Director: Jia-Hua Ping, ARTS Group Duration: 2 Months, November - December, 2016 The dining hall is situated in a narrow courtyard within a new hotel complex in Suburban Suzhou. Since the beginning, the aim has been to make a sculptural gathering place that the hotel occupants can comfortably dine in while enjoying the surrounding landscape. Inherently, it is an extrovert program within an introvert site. This became the main challenge of the project: how to design an outward-looking dining hall in a narrow yard without compromising the privacy of the occupants. The solution was to erect a series of walls that directs sightlines away from hotel rooms. The curtain wall allows ample amount of sunlight to flood into the open interior.
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The project was inspired by the meandering paths in Chinese Gardens. As one walks through it, the path twist and turns - guiding the viewers’ eyes between sceneries. The dining hall takes on the same idea by using two concrete walls and a roof “drape” that carefully frames the views outside without aligning eye sights directly into the occupants’ rooms.
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Ceramic Tile Roof Southeast View
Curtain Wall System
Southwest View
Concrete Structure
Northeast View
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Anlong Site Survey ARTS Group Internship Location: Anlong, Guizhou Director: Yan-Yu Long, ARTS Group Duration: 1 Week, October 2016
ARTS Group was given the opportunity to plan and design a new town in Anlong, Guizhou that brings together residents living under the poverty line. Over the course of a week, a team was assembled to survey the building site, as well as the living conditions of surrounding residences. Many whom live below the poverty line lives in a small village or alone - mostly far inside the mountains. The houses were mostly built by the residents’ ancestors, and often had problems such as air leakage, low ceiling height, and limited window openings. Most houses are without power; they simply relied on a stove for everything: cooking food, heating the house, and lighting the interior. Surveys of these houses revealed values such as passive heating strategies and limitations like limited lighting. In addition, the wood structural system, chuan-dou-shi, was also prevelent amongst all the houses visited - showing the resilience of this method.
Masonry Tile Roof
Thatch Floor (2F)
Wooden Partitions
Masonry Skin
Raised Base
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Gridshell Structure
Location: Cheticamp, Nova Scotia Director: Coastal Studio, Dalhousie University Duration: 2 weeks, July 2016 Commissioned by Parks Canada, this project aims to create a multipurpose pavilion situated at the foot of a mountain. During the two weeks, tasks involved testing a 1:4 scale model, creating landscaping features, and erecting the four main concrete walls. The experience reiterated the importance of considering the order of construction and their duration. For instance, while testing the 1:4 scale model, the team discovered structural problems in the shape of the roof, which put a pause on putting up the wooden lattice as originally planned. Furthermore, the slate flooring was also installed too early and had shifted due to constant movement around the work area; this later led to removal of some slabs - hence wasted time and efforts.
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Museum of Modern Art NS Location: Halifax, Nova Scotia Director: Rayleen Hills Duration: 3 Months, May - July 2016
Situated in downtown Halifax, the Museum of Moderns Art NS explores designing at the public scale. The process focused on developing a rich gallery experience by introducing two staircases – one staircase for main circulation and another that leads to a secret gallery. In addition, form is also explored extensively in relation to using a "sliced-corner" to draw visitors in.
Concept Drawing - Museum to Secret Gallery
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4F - Main Gallery
3F - Open & Secret Gallery
2F - Contemporary Gallery
GF - Lobby
Basement - Storage, Classroom 11
Form Exploration
One of the design intentions was to generate a rock-like form with an obliquely sliced corner; this was in response to the building’s corner lot in the city. Instead of starting with a mass, the process began by looking at the building skin and how on its own it can create an impression of massiveness. The technique of origami fold was then introduced as a mean to study this idea. A result of this technique was it led to an interior that became independent of the facade, which introduced contrast in their spatial qualities and structure.
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Skylight Wall Section
Entrance Rendering
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Lunenburg Float House
Location: Lunenburg, Nova Scotia Director: Brian Mackay-Lyons, Cristina Verissimo Duration: 4 Months, January - April 2016
REST
DINE
WORK
This project aims to design a modernized housing prototype situated in Lunenburg, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Nova Scotia. Since the beginning, the group devised an urban plan with a series of 24'x60' lots as infill to the current streetscape. This project worked with 3 of these lots within the “rest� region. All three houses rest on a south-facing slope that descends into the harbour. While the southern part of the house is reserved for a double-height living room, the northern part is reserved for more private functions such as cooking, bathing, and sleeping. A large bay window signifies the focus of the house as a place to dwell and be closer to the harbour.
Old Lunenburg
Ocean View
Floating Pavilions 14
Parti & Design Development
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North Elevation North Elevation
South Elevation
South Elevation
Section C-C’
Section B-B’
Section A-A’
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Roof Decking
Purlins
Heavy Timber Structure
Dwelling Unit
Grounding Unit
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Above: 2nd floor viewed from 3rd floor. The clerestory windows are leveled to the eye so the inhabitants may view the distant hills from there. Below: 2nd floor viewed from the kitchen. The kitchen counter and windows are aligned to point towards the bay window.
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Case Study Maison de Verre
Location: Paris, France Duration: 1 Month, February 2016 Collaboration: Julie Leung; Kathrine Deturbide Maison de Verre is a house situated within a courtyard in Paris. Hidden from the streets, the architect Pierre Chareau took advantage of a tight site by glazing two sides of the house with translucent glass blocks, which allowed light in while preserving privacy. This strategy informed the Lunenburg Float House project through the way it dealt with spatial constraints, privacy, and lighting.
Site Parti
Interior of Maison de Verre; Image taken from Google Images.
Axonometric of 2nd Floor 20
Structure
Public & Private
Served & Servant
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Case Study Barcelona Pavilion Location: Barcelona, Catalonia Director: Leon Katespontes Duration: 3 Weeks
This case study focused exclusively on investigating the structure and spatial quality of Barcelona Pavilion. After finding out how the pavilion roof was held up by only eight columns – each comprised of four steel angles – we realized this allowed Mies to place walls anywhere he wanted. As a result, he was able to create a fluid space, which is demonstrated in an abstract model made later in the study.
Column Disassembly - Section-Axonometric
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Structural Design Twisted Column
Director: Brian Leilly, Peter Braithwaite Duration: 2 Weeks, June 2016 Collaboration: Katherine Deturbide, Alix Lanyon Taylor
Originated from an origami fold, the twisted column became part of the school's Structures Week, where it was developed further into a 1:20 model. The column is generated from a flat, triangulated rectangle. Once folded, this geometry lends any sheet material that takes on this shape high compressional and lateral stability. The column was then combined with a canopy later to make mushroom columns inspired by Nervi's Palazzo del Lavoro.
6m 5m 4m 3.1m 3m 2.9m 2m 1m 0m
Drawing by Alix Lanyon-Taylor
Column Foundation Connection
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Collapsible Origami Director: Self-Directed Duration: 1 Month, January 2015
This exploration studied how we can apply the principle of isometry to generate a series of origami folds. The principle basically takes a module and applying one of the four movements to it: translation, reflection, rotation, and glide-reflection. The study is kept abstract with the sole use of paper. As a result, a series of collapsible origami folds are generated; it is therefore possible to consider these patterns being scaled up and applied with other materials and means of connections. Similar principles were applied to projects such as the Museum of Modern Arts NS and Twisted Column Structural Design.
Module Glide Reflection
Result Fold Pattern for model 3 24
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