2017-2019 Ke Zhai Portfolio

+86 18192386028 // zoeblunt01973@gmail.com

Education & Qualifications Columbia University M.S

Büro Ole Scheeren Architecture Position: Junior Architect OPEN Architecture office Position: Architect Assistant

09/2020 - 09/2021

Working Status 01/2019 – Present 06/2018 – 07/2018

Academic Achievements ——(4/China; Individual) SOM Foundation China Prize Finalist Commendation - SOM | Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (06/2018) ——(2/500+; Individual) Second prize in the Sunrise Architectural Design Competition for University Students (10/2017) ——(22/600; Individual) Excellence Award in the 2017 GUYU Cup National Sustainable Design Competition for College Students - National Steering Committee of Architectural Disciplines in Institutions of Higher Learning (06/2017) ——(1/50; Team leader) First Prize of National University Challenge Cup - Chang 'an University- “Rethinking the heritage in Xi’an” (04/2017) ——(103/1000；Group)Third Prize of National Art Festival for University Students Education Ministry of the People's Republic of China(04/2018)

" Like other revolutions , it begins in enthusiasm and ends in dictatorship" -----Alvar Aalto

Ke ZHAI

01

Spectacle

02

Tofu

03

The Walled

Honor: 2017 First Prize of National Challenge Cup Facts: Individual / Academic

Honor : Excellence Award GuYu national competition Facts: Individual / Academic

Honor: Second Prize of 2017 Sunrise college student competition Facts: Individual / Academic

01

Construction Contractor

SPECTACLE

Honor : 2017First Prize of National Challenge Cup

Real Estate

Year: 2018 Location: Xi'an , China Type : Individual / Academic work

In the current era of media imagery, the effectiveness of managing the consumer economy in cities is based on the premise that there is a certain degree of disregard for cultural forms.

This research project began in Xi'an, a city that shares with history, from the appearance of explosive cultural consumption.

Urban culture began to experience the process of coronation, dislocation and coronation as the image of Woody, the protagonist of Nebraska. The playful and typical cultural plaza surrounded by the last regional space of this work accommodates a variety of image rituals.

It reveals that in the process of high-speed reproduction of cultural landscapes, culture itself is not only an expensive symbol. It was the filters of Guy Debord's that made us unable to respond to the tactile environment.

Design Contractor

Masses

Sales Department Media National Heritage Board

Spectacle Agency Network

Management Committee of senic spot Environmental Protection Agency

Ministry of Construction

Local Government

Civil Defence Ministry Land Bureau

Culture commodity Real Estate Coronation

Culture Relics

Truth of Culture power&ritual Truth of King

Ordinary Being False King

Abdication Consumerism Real Clown

With the collapse of the capital,abdication of culturewill emerge.

Falsity Coronation of culture - undercapital culture become a code of consumption.

Truth Falsility of King-illusive king wielding power consumed by the masses through the carnival rites.

Code of Consumption

CULTURE SPECTACLE Culture Spectacle

Collective memories were explored from public building investigations. From the view of functional transformation, spatial transformation and anthropological information behind, seven ancestral hall, one primary school, one grain supply center and one residential house were selected as representative case studies. Based on spatial-temporal understanding, three different representative social developing stages were summarized for buildings category including family building, productive building, building for recreation and commercial business.

Based on spatial transformation analysis for those buildings, social background and related public buildings functional transformation tendency are able to be summarized.

02

TOFU

Honor : Excellence Award GuYu national competition FACTS Year: 2018 Location: ZhaJi , China Type : Individual /Academic work

With the continuous accumulation of urban capital, China's countryside is under “rural gentrification�. In a tofu workshop renovation in an ancient village, I hope to exhibit tofu museum to people and preserve production space.

After a plethora of family architecture typology researches, hardly can we ignore the significance of special patio, adjusting microenvironment and dominating worship activities. Apart from preserving old wooden structure, I developed new typology of special patio, which manifested family expectations and religious rituality. Moreover, an act wall was divided into many sectors, representing its traditional techniques, according to required space volume and environment. A series of space strategies from section considered visitors who comes from diverse perspectives.

Wooden Structure In the renovation of Tofu Workshop, through placing multi-interfaces of new volumn magnify such effects and function as node.

Act House for Tofu Show Through considering the wall as a volumn, tofu workshop can be exposed and manifested in the act house. Different act houses are designed for varied Tofu production process.

Reinterpretation of “ 四水归堂”

DESIGN PROCESS unfolding sequential space center around "special patio"

“ 四 水 归 堂 ”---The rainwater flows from the roof to the courtyard.

This special patio in the traditional researches is only regarded as an operation of architecture micro-environment, which undermine its "body construction". However, given the high wall around every faimly architectures, such special patio in the family dominates the worship space, where people's expectations and hopes lie in, and bring about a strong sense of rituality. " 四 水 归 堂 ” represent a compromise between ancient religious or unnatural expectations and Chinese non-religious architectures.

In the renovation of Tofu Workshop, through placing multiinterfaces of new volumn magnify such effects and function as node.

DESIGN PROCESS disctinctive perspectives design from sections

① Lobby ② Upsiding ③ Subsiding Platform ④ Act Wall ⑤ Terrece ⑥ Tofu dessert bar ⑦ Tofu Production

Special Patio in winter Views from the Act Wall

② ①

④ ③

Elevation 2.5m

①

⑦

⑥

Elevation 5.5m ⑤

Tofu dessert bar

upsiding

old wooden structure

subsiding platform

act house

03

THE WALLED

Honor : Second Prize of Sunrise college student competition Year: 2017 Location: Xi'an , China Type : Individual / Academic work

In the observation of Xi'an, an urban architecture filled with ruins, and the life of urban residents, the “mosaic�-urban images were discovered.

Deisgn start from observing the Wall, the seemingly most basic architectural element, last for almost two thoundsands years, which now negative act in a retrospective way.

Researches of how the wall in the history and the historic walls influencing the surrounding material space and human consciousness, clearly demonstrate the controlled environment behind the gaint structure and, anxiety between the inside and outside.

Inspired by Andy Warhol's pop art, I repeating and emphasizing the "wall" space to reinterpret the daily life inside the Wall, giving concrete functions, and alienating the "wall" itself.

Site Analysis

The reproduced walls dissimilate the feeling of isolation or anxiety

Space Strategy Z-axis

City Wall, Berilin Wall, Mexican wall ect.

Wall History X-axis

were uesd to protect one classes from domestic troubles and foreign invasions

Sense of anxiety and isolation was hidden in such political results, which defined the space right.

Historic Wall Y-axis

DUPLICATION

ALIENATION

A series of walls, etracting from the daily spatial experience of inside of the city wall, become a spontaneity space, experimental outdoor activity venues. From the “consciousness border” to the “emphasis on the border” and finally to the “alienation border”, the trilogy is merged.

Supporting by the features of the old city wall, the third system in this functional constucts---walking experience path develop a new dramatic uncertainty of space experience.

material features and spontaneous activities demonstrated in the collage