Yuan (Karen) Chiu The University of Hong Kong (HKU) - Postgraduate Diploma in Landscape Architecture (Expected Aug 2020) National Taiwan University (NTU) - Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering | Minor in Chinese Literature (Jan 2019) - Cumulative GPA: 3.78 / 4.3
+852 9490 1260 (HK) / +886 932 035 043 (TW) yuankarenchiu@gmail.com Rm. B3-I, 19/F, Hai Kwong Mansion "YOOFHILL", 71-77 Hill Rd. Hong Kong No.11, Ln.88, Sec.4, Heping E. Rd., Wenshan Dist., Taipei City 116, Taiwan
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
RELEVANT SKILLS
Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, NTU (Feb – June 2019)
Language
Research Assistant, Professor Hui-Mei Chen
- Mandarin (Native)
- Project: Preliminary Spatial Planning for Green Care Living Area in Rural Northern Taiwan
- Taiwanese (Fluent)
AECOM Taiwan Corporation (July – Aug 2017) Summer Intern, Department of Water and Urban Development - Organised and analysed water quality detection data and researched noted cases of river restoration - Participated in a brownfield planning competition with group members from different professions
Computer-Aided Engineering Group, Department of Civil Engineering, NTU (July – Aug 2016) Summer Intern, Professor Shih-Chung (Jessy) Kang’s lab - Created online orientation courses about emergency response in government agencies involved in water issues - Created online courses about disaster prevention information for the public
PRESENTATION Yuan, C., Hui-Mei, C. ‘Exploring the Gap Between Academic Research and Practical Construction Guidelines of Ecological Engineering for Stream Habitat Restoration: A Literature Review’, Oral presentation at 9th International Consortium of Landscape and Ecological Engineering Conference, Taichung, Taiwan, 26 Novemver, 2018.
TRAINING - 2018 Taipei Urban Regeneration Institute (May – July 2018) - Landscape Architecture Professional Training Course (IFLA Taiwan) (Oct 2018)
AWARD - Scholarship from HK & Macau Taiwanese Charity Fund Ltd
LEADERSHIP & EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES - Chief Finance Manager, Civil Engineering Student Association, NTU (June 2016 – June 2017) - Drummer in a rock band, GongGuan Love! (Aug 2015 – Oct 2016)
- English (TOEFL: 99 - Advanced) - Japanese (JLPT N2 certification - Intermediate)
Software
CONTENT Collection of Courseworks (2019 Fall) of Postgraduate Diploma in Landscape Architecture Programme at The University of Hong Kong
01
KNOWING A TREE
02
INTERPRETING PROUN
03
MAPPING HONG KONG HISTORY: THE CURSE OF TAI PING SHAN
04
DIALOGUE WITH EILEEN CHANG IN HONG KONG, 1941
05
HUMAN FLOW & SOCIAL DYNAMICS MAPPING: TEMPLE STREET IN KOWLOON, HONG KONG
06
GRADIENTS: TRAVERSING & TRANSECTING AT PINEWOOD BATTERY
07
ASSEMBLIES: DEVELOPING SPACE AND FORM
08
INTERVENTION REVEALING THE DYNAMIC SITE
01 KNOWING A TREE Course: Landscape Architecture Intensive (Fall 2019) Personal Work Observe, measure (by self-defined system) and document the conditions of a registered tree in Hong Kong.
01 KNOWING A TREE
01
Scientific Name: Ficus rumphii Common Name: Mock Bodh Tree Registration No.: ARCHSD CW/27 Location: Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens
02
01 KNOWING A TREE
PART I: MAPPING
LEAF ARRANGEMENT ALTERNATE
COMPARISON WITH BODH TREE
TRUNK
01 KNOWING A TREE
03
SECTIONAL ELEVATION
SECTIONAL PLAN
PART II: TRASPOSITION
Cubism is a revolutionary art approach invented by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in early 20th century, representing things through combining views from varied angles.
Photos taken from different sides were merged to display the tree in the observer's eyes.
04
01 KNOWING A TREE
02 INTERPRETING PROUN Course: Landscape Media I (Fall 2019) Personal Work Proun is a series of drawing made by a Russian artist, El Lissitzky, from 1919 to 1924. Visual ambiguity and variable perspectives of Proun urge observers to generate their own interpretation and spatial relationship by perceiving the image from self-defined perspectives. This assignment aims to reconstruct the Proun by making plan, elevation, and axonometric drawings.
02 INTERPRETING PROUN
05
Proun AII, 1920 by El Lissitzky
PLAN
06
02 INTERPRETING PROUN
02 INTERPRETING PROUN
ELEVATION
07
AXONOMETRIC DRAWING
08
02 INTERPRETING PROUN
03 MAPPING HONG KONG HISTORY: THE CURSE OF TAI PING SHAN Course: Landscape Media I (Fall 2019) Personal Work In 1894, when U.K. government colonised Hong Kong, plague happened and caused mass death. Based on a book overlapping the reality and fictional historical story Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City - written by Dung Kai-cheung, a renown fiction writer from Hong Kong, this project aims to map the social conditions and several events during that period with abstract representative methods:
03 MAPPING HONG KONG HISTORY: THE CURSE OF TAI PING SHAN
09 - Contour lines and Queen’s Road to indicate their relationships to racial distribution - The buildings with straight-line-texture are European’s - Shading and lines show the origin and spread of plague - Smooth curves indicate that one-third of population left Hong Kong because of the plague - British government demolished buildings, built Blake Garden at Tai Ping Shan Street and restricted living areas of Chinese, who were in the majority of patients in order to control the disease
10
03 MAPPING HONG KONG HISTORY: THE CURSE OF TAI PING SHAN
04 DIALOGUE WITH EILEEN CHANG IN HONG KONG, 1941 Course: Landscape Media I (Fall 2019) Personal Work I tried to illustrate what I’ve seen and heard in Hong Kong during the unrest in 2019 and overlap them with observations as well as experience of Eileen Chang, my favorite Mandarin writer, who had studied in The University of Hong Kong and had encountered Pacific War in 1941, telling the stories, lives, and scars of this land and people living here.
04 DIALOGUE WITH EILEEN CHANG IN HONG KONG, 1941
11 In the mapping, I categorised 4 factors – the revealed, response, prevalence, and darkness in the two periods – 1941 and 2019 – and defined different symbols for them. Each period has its own corresponding emotional feeling to those factors. Then, according to Eileen Chang’s prose which shared her Hong Kong experience, From the Ashes, as well as recent social events happened in Hong Kong, I put the symbols on the Hong Kong map. The more intense the emotion, the larger the symbol. And since it’s “dialogue”, I found several sentences representing each emotional feelings. For those of 1941, I chose some sentences from Eileen Chang’s prose, while for those of 2019, I chose some impressive sentences that I’ve heard in person or from the media.
MAPPING Dialogue with Eileen Chang in Hong Kong, 1941 與張愛玲的1941香港對話
12
2019 REVEALED
HEARTLESSNESS
PANIC
RESPONSE
RAGE
VACUITY
PREVALENCE
DESIRE
DARKNESS
LIE VIOLENCE
04 DIALOGUE WITH EILEEN CHANG IN HONG KONG, 1941
1941 SINCERENESS
HONG KONG 1941
HONG KONG 2019
The collage HONG KONG 1941 is a combination of Eileen Chang’s experience - the war burnt out, Japanese occupied Hong Kong, students were forced to stop their study. Some people left to escape from the war, while others were trapped, felt uncertain for their future, and as a result got married to find some comfort.
The collage HONG KONG 2019 is a combination of my experience. Police attacked the universities, the most important symbol of civilisation, the first bullet shot to the protester, the lunch break protest of business workers in Central, the drowning of a swimmer, and the graffiti that really, really, shocked me.
04 DIALOGUE WITH EILEEN CHANG IN HONG KONG, 1941
13
COLLAGE In the final collage, OVERLAPPED HONG KONG IMPRESSION, I imagined that Eileen Chang and I are interacting through our memory. I chose several images among which I could perceive some similarities between the two periods. Someone came, someone did something since they want better future, someone took the rifle and aimed others, someone left during the unrest. Since literally it’s “dialogue”, both Eileen Chang's and my writings regaring our Hong Kong experiences were put in the background, and to some extent they are just like our diaries.
14
04 DIALOGUE WITH EILEEN CHANG IN HONG KONG, 1941
05 HUMAN FLOW & SOCIAL DYNAMIC MAPPING: TEMPLE STREET IN KOWLOON, HONG KONG Course: Landscape Systems (Fall 2019) Personal Work
05 HUMAN FLOW & SOCIAL DYNAMIC MAPPING TEMPLE STREET IN KOWLOON, HONG KONG
15
The particularity of Temple Street had first been revealed to the world in famous film such as God of Cookery and C'est la vie, mon chéri, making it a tourists’ hot spot and promoting local culture. Due to prevalence of Hong Kong movie and drama in 1990s, to most of tourists, Temple Street is their first impression of Hong Kong -- full of stands selling various products and local food, vendors’ cries fusing with atmosphere of night market and many secrets being hidden behind underground activities. Colorful traditional activities and organized management form a unique streetscape changing regularly in daily cycle, from tranquility to bustle, and eventually coming back to tranquility at the end of a day.
Temple Street in the Afternoon and Night
Visitors’ Activities at Temple Street Going Fortune-telling
Hanging Out
Look Around
16 05 HUMAN FLOW & SOCIAL DYNAMIC MAPPING TEMPLE STREET IN KOWLOON, HONG KONG
Having Late Night Supper
REGIONAL MAPPING A larger scale including adjacent roads of Temple Street were conducted to show how visitors come and walk around nearby areas.
05 HUMAN FLOW & SOCIAL DYNAMIC MAPPING TEMPLE STREET IN KOWLOON, HONG KONG
17
LOCAL MAPPING Vendors’ business hours, visitors’ tracks and their behaviours during different periods were illustrated on a local scale focusing on Temple Street itself.
18 05 HUMAN FLOW & SOCIAL DYNAMIC MAPPING TEMPLE STREET IN KOWLOON, HONG KONG
06 GRADIENTS: TRAVERSING & TRANSECTING AT PINEWOOD BATTERY Course: Foundation Design Studio I (Fall 2019) Project 01 Personal Work Pinewood Battery is a site formed from its bedrock volcanic tuffs and exposed colluvium soils; its ecologies altered by woodcutting and subsequent reforestation efforts. It is also a site with historic value - an artifact of a once militarised landscape - as well as contemporary value, sporting picnic areas and public toilets. We were asked to visit Pinewood Battery and, over the course of three weeks, observe and record the qualities and dimensions of a selected 0.25 ha site. 19
06 GRADIENTS: TRAVERSING & TRANSECTING AT PINEWOOD BATTERY
I mapped the distribution of ground cover at Pinewood Battery by pencil hatches as well as a suggested track by myself, which was arbitrary, personal, and related to my feeling when visiting the site at the very first time.
PHOTO ESSAY
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06 GRADIENTS: TRAVERSING & TRANSECTING AT PINEWOOD BATTERY
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06 GRADIENTS: TRAVERSING & TRANSECTING AT PINEWOOD BATTERY
06 GRADIENTS: TRAVERSING & TRANSECTING AT PINEWOOD BATTERY
PLAN
SECTION
22
06 GRADIENTS: TRAVERSING & TRANSECTING AT PINEWOOD BATTERY
07 ASSEMBLIES: DEVELOPING SPACE AND FORM Course: Foundation Design Studio I (Fall 2019) Project 02 Personal Work We developed a landscape composed of building (step, frame, wall), cultivating (large tree, medium tree, shrub), and shifting (slope, ridge, basin) elements within a framework of serial discovery and iterative combination. This siteless exercise of a 40m x 40m landscape toolkit development will form the base of subsequent Project 03.
07 ASSEMBLES: DEVELOPING SPACE AND FORM
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SPATIAL EXPERIMENT: ABSTRACT CONCEPTUAL MODEL
24 07 ASSEMBLES: DEVELOPING SPACE AND FORM
INTERPRETATION: STAGE 1 Overlapping photos of three elevations formed a base that defined the design pattern of this project. This pattern was subsequently used as inspiration in the next stage to create and arrange building, cultivating and shifting elements.
07 ASSEMBLES: DEVELOPING SPACE AND FORM
25
07 ASSEMBLES: DEVELOPING SPACE AND FORM
SHIFTING
CULTIVATING
BUILDING
INTERPRETATION: STAGE 2
26
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT The idea of shifting was chosed to be refined and further developed a set of landscape toolkit featuring unique topography.
PLAN
07 ASSEMBLES: DEVELOPING SPACE AND FORM
27
SECTION
PHYSICAL MODEL (A 20m x 20m CHOSEN PART)
DESIGN FEATURES
Consistent straight-lined patterns in the interpretation stage were transformed into a topography featuring "folded ground", which was inspired by a common paper folding method
BUILDING
Frames aligned with ridge lines
Steps merged with topography / retaining walls
SHIFTING
Straight-lined contours
3D MODEL RENDERING
28
Tree-Column patterns
07 ASSEMBLES: DEVELOPING SPACE AND FORM
CULTIVATING
Compressed topography
08 INTERVENTION REVEALING THE DYNAMIC SITE Course: Foundation Design Studio I (Fall 2019) Project 03 Personal Work Following the previous two project, each student would identified and mapped a dynamic at the site, Pinewood Battery, and deploy some landscape toolkits or design ideas developed in Project 02 to further propose interventions in this project. The intervention itself would be engaged with the chosen dynamic, considering changes and alterations of Pinewood Battery over different periods of time.
08 INTERVENTION REVEALING THE DYNAMIC SITE
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CONCEPT & DEPLOYMENT STRATEGIES This project aims to explore the possibility of visitors’ tracks to access Pinewood Battery. Besides utilizing building elements such as stairs, walls, frames, slabs, and slides to provide visitors with new paths to arrive at and leave the site, process effects led by enclosure, passage, or separation of spaces are also experimented to obscurely guide people to create their own “spiritually intuitive tracks”. These new tracks made by visitors after several days, months, and years would be a part of the intervention gradually, keeping changing micro-topographies and land patterns of the site.
POTENTIAL TRACKS
PHYSICALLY INTUITIVE TRACKS
SPIRITUALLY INTUITIVE TRACKS
- Regard everywhere as possible paths - Potential intervention areas
- Clear suggestions / indications of paths made by people such as concrete trails and stairs - Most of visitors are used to following
- Outside system tracks “scoured” by individuals - More obvious in undeveloped flat areas - Usually change distribution / compaction of ground cover and micro-topographies - Physical distance of adjacent attraction and movability are critical factors which influence visitors’ choices
DESIGN FEATURES
STEPS FOLLOWING TOPOGRAPHY
RAMP STAIRS
(PICNICKING AREA-HISTORICAL SITE)
STRAIGHT-LINE CONTOURS
STAIRS
(HIKING TRAIL-PICNICKING AREA)
FOLDED GROUND
08 INTERVENTION REVEALING THE DYNAMIC SITE
LONG FU SHAN HIKING TRAIL
30
PLAN
The slope-slide-stair structure enhances more ways to get to the historical site from existing hiking trail.
Th e s t a i r s h e r e e n a b l e movement crossing different elevations
08 INTERVENTION REVEALING THE DYNAMIC SITE
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Retaining walls between steps form corridors to guide the visitors to walk through ground slopes and slightly change the micro-topography here.
Folded ground along with stairs give more indication of moving tracks at this relatively large flat area.
Maximum height of the ridge is 50 cm, so visitors could also choose to cross through the ridge directily.
DETAILED PLAN 2
1 3
30 m
3 30 m
1
2
32
08 INTERVENTION REVEALING THE DYNAMIC SITE
SECTION 01 In order to make it more accessible to users than the design in Project 02, I altered the form of "foled ground" here, adding flat areas between the ridges and some stairs. Visitors could not only pass through stairs, but also have the choice to climb up and down the 50-cm-high small hills. I imagined that once the visitors go up the existing stairs from the hiking trail, which is in the right of the section, they could see a broad view composed of various elements from the lower flat area to the ramp and the historical facilities.
08 INTERVENTION REVEALING THE DYNAMIC SITE
33
30 m
SECTION 02 The structure here connects Long Fu Shan hiking trail to the historical site, showing that there are multiple ways to get to a higher point from a lower point, so visitors’ track could be free regardless of elevation difference. Sensible and alternative arrangements of slopes, stairs, slides, and platforms made the structure here more efficient and complex enough to enable various user activities.
34 08 INTERVENTION REVEALING THE DYNAMIC SITE
30 m
SECTION 03 Here I built a stairs connecting the ramp and the lower flat area. Some stairs become retaining walls to ensure the safety. I imagined people would try to walk through the corridors made between these retaining walls - they serve as “hints” for people who just don’t want to walk on human-made structures, and eventually people would gradually change the micro-topography, compaction, erosion, or distribution of ground cover here by their feet and activities.
08 INTERVENTION REVEALING THE DYNAMIC SITE
35
30 m