portfolio 2013

O I L O F T R O P I

LA YU-AN

CONTENTS

02

CV

04

student competition roof design

06 08

materials plastic ribbon metal/cast/wood

12

paper modelling cubic bridge

14 16

paintings technical pen coral/pencil/watercolour

18

chinese calligraphy immitation on xun oyang

20

sketch travelling

22

EPILOGUE

CV Yu-An LAI

賴昱安

Born in 1990 From Taoyuan, Taiwan yuanta97@gmail.com +886 916 093 076 EDUCATION 09.2012-04.2013

Tamkang University majored in Architecture, dropped out of uni for thinking on architecture

09.2009-06.2012

National Taiwan University Bachelor of Arts in Foreign Languages and Literatures (graduated early)

JOB EXPERIENCE 09.2013-present

LS Architects Intern

07.2013-10.2013

Facesread Publishing Content Creator on Facebook Page " 臉譜出版 art & design"

07.2013-09.2013

Institute of European & American Studies, Academia Sinica Part-time Research Assistant

CLUB EXPERIENCE

02

09.2011-06.2012

Calligraphy Club We held annual calligraphy exhibition with other universities. I had my work exhibited through consistent daily practice for an entire year.

06.2010-09.2011

The NTU Consciousness ( 意識報 ) It's a serious school press aimed at arousing students’ concern for social issues. I worked as the club president, editor and journalist.

ACTIVITIES/COMPETITION 09.2011

winning award (second prize) for Future Living Student Competition held

by Architecture Association of the R.O.C.

04.2011-06.2011

stage production for August OsageCounty (NTU)

03.2011

Taipei River Urbanism Workshop in Ruin Academy

04.2010-09.2010

volunteer in DDGP ( 洞洞館計畫 ), a series of art projects for bidding farewell to a modern Chinese building built in 1950s.

ARCHITECTURAL TRAVELLINGS WINTER 2012

Tokyo | JAPAN

SPRING 2013

Porto, Braga, Aveiro, Coimbra, Cascais, Lisboa | PORTUGAL with visits to Souto Moura's office & Alvaro Leite Siza Vieira's own house

SPRING 2013

Berlin, Dessau, Weimar | GERMANY

LANGUAGES Mandarin English Italian German Japanese Taiwanese

native language speak fluently and read/write with high proficiency intermediate intermediate basic knowledge mother tongue

SKILLS drawing, handcraft, Adobe Suite (Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign), field research and interviews INTERESTS drama, playing basketball, jogging, drawing, making & thinking

CARBON COPY TEXTURE OF LOCAL HISTORY (Grouped with Jie-Ting Yan/2011) Second prize for Future Living Student Competition

SITE Lane 119, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei, Taiwan Close to Chanchu Montain with wild forest and bush, great view (able to see Taipei 101) CURRENT SITUATION Residents here are either college students or millitary dependents and their offsprings.

The small house does not provide sufficient space for residents to have more interactions with one another. We want to bring more possible sharing spaces for completely strangers like college students.

DESIGN STRATEGY This area has been occupied by certain different groups of people in history. Over the past hundred years, fields, slanted roof and patched planks were gradually mixed with concrete and brick buildings.

We embraced this complexity as an important local context. On solving the heated iron roof problem as demanded and creating more sharing spaces for residents, we also hope to sustain the special local context and texture.

bottom iron roof covered with anti-heated clothe/ water spray system/rain recycling middle layer bamboo (local building material) upper layer adjustable pavement, seats & plants

Japanese ruled period

MATERIAL EXPERIMENTS: PLASTIC RIBBON

06

Plastic ribbon (flat & anti-tension) is usually red and used for binding fruit cardboard boxs/other industrial usages in Taiwan. I found this material in hardware store and wondered if I could use this dĂŠjĂ vu material to express myself for the course demand.

I cross-folded two ribbons to combine them into one spring-like strip. Then I threaded tens of strips together through intersected joinery, producing other dimensional possibilities.

Later I chose white ribbon for better reflective quality.

I wanted the work felt with courage that lived up to an ideal. (2012)

MATERIAL EXPERIMENTS: WOOD/CAST/METAL Aroma of Old Street in Tamsui

08

Assigned to the oldest street in Tamsui, I started with a broad observation and analysis of the surroundings. The most interesting phenomenon I found here was the tourists' attitude towards the decadent old streets. People came here to seek old, interesting stuff but which was either in poor condition or pretended to be old.

In my first concept model, I put a nice-looking old house picture into stingy soap base, into which I poured the filtered broth from stingy tofu. I tried to use the ironic senses (beatiful/eye vs. stingy/ nose) to tell the changes of Tamsui at the present.

On the second model, I transfered the contrast between senses into materials. By using all the materials we were allowed to use, I tried to immitate the nostalgic imagery of the tourism.

I cut and interlocked the rusty iron square tubes so it could stood up or slided through the iron track. The chaotic characteristic in assigned site kept emerging from my mind, so I combined the soomth surface of concrete with raw texture. But most of my classmates liked the wood part more for the colour reason. (2013)

10

PAPER MODELLING: A cubic bridge that is able to sustain 7 bricks

Besides making 8 neat, perfect cubes, we were requested to make a 80 cm bridge to load weights. Analyzing the structural mechanics of the bridge and the time I got, I decided to simplify the form of cubes to make it more sufficient to sustain loads. These cubes were interlocked in different dimesions as my basic strategy. There were even 3 cubes wedged together to make a stronger connection. (2012)

12

PAINTINGS: TECHNICAL PEN

With consistent practices on sketches, it became more easily for me to express my thoughts through drawing. Below is the detail of an exercise in technical pen. The other on the right-hand is named "FREEWILL". I drew it with 0.1~0.8 mm technical pens on A1-sized tracing paper. (2012)

14

16

PAINTINGS: CORAL/PENCIL/WATERCOLOUR Accidentally I found I'd drawn the same people, including myself, twice or more. The paper size was all octavo except for the statue of Medici.

(2011-13)

CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY: IMMITATION ON XIU OYANG The transcribed Chinese poem, which I adored for the implicit description with nature, is about utopian quest. (2012)

18

SKETCH Travelling in Porto, Lisboa, Coimbra, Berlin & Weimar B5-sized notebook (2013)

20

"Practicing architecture is asking oneself questions, finding one's own answers with the help of the teacher, whittling down, finding solutions.

Over and over again.

The strength of a good design lies in ourselves and in our ability to perceive the world with both emotion and reason. A good architectural design is sensuous. A good architectural design is intelligent.

We all experience architecture before we have even heard the word."

by Peter Zumthor

Confused about how an architect should learn through life, I dropped out of school searching for an answer.

During my travel in Portugal, I was deeply hooked by Alvaro Siza’s work—the faculty building of the Porto school of architecture. It was the first time that I experienced architecture as a language. At the shocking moment, I said to myself that if I became an architect, I would communicate like that. The practice in architecture should not merely be a profession but a language that communicates ideas, expresses emotions and connects human beings.

I doubt by providing a better architectural design can transform the society, but I think designers all have a choice: to raise the standard of designed environment or not. Every place has its own special history as well as unsatisfactory, and what designers can be involved in is to provide some imagination and possibilities that correspond to current situation. That's why I would like to work on so far. *** I deeply appreciate it for all the support and help from friends and others. But for their encouragement, sometimes I might not have found any meanings of my persistence, or stubbornness. Thank you all!

22

EPILOGUE

OC T 2013