Institutions have long served as core parts of our society that impose structures of rules, norms, and values on how people behave. Fundamentally, institutions are created to fulfill various social needs that have appeared throughout human history. In this way, the evolution of different institutions reflects the evolution of societal concepts over human history. As certain social phenomena or trends indicate a change in certain social needs, institutional rules and forms must also respond to these changes rather than rejecting voices that do not conform to the norm.
As a spatial explorer, I aim at investigating the interlocking nature beween institutional power and public interest with sensitive spatial narrative. Individually, How can architecture itself become social laboratories, challenging existing institutionalizations of rules, norms, and values that are inadequate for adapting to social changes? Collectively, How can community-based architectural design inspire different social institutions with diverse interests to collaborate comprehensively?
01 Nested Assembly
STU 1201 Integrate
Instructor:Prof. Eric Howeler
Individual Work Site: Boston,MA
Situated within a dense and dynamic urban context, the new student center for Berklee College of Music encounters a challenge of incorporating three types of programs within one building: music innovation, performance hall, and student center. These three types of program require a heterogeneous co-existence of spaces that have various spans and levels of enclosure. Corresponding to the front-of-house, main stage, and backof-house typology of theater circulation, The project re-clusters the program of student center and music innovation into front-of-house and back-of-house. Nested between music labs and classroooms at the bottom and flexible student center spaces at the top of the building, the grand theater becomes the “twisting” catalyst of the switch of FOH/BOH program locations. While three cores situate at three corners of the building as anchor points, the building has a transfer column system to change dense column grid within music innovation to open column grid within student center.
The site of this project is the existing location of Berkelee College of Music. Situated within a dense urban context surrounded with multiple high-rise buildings, the building intends to incorporate three types of programs: student center, music classroom, and performance theater. With reference to the spatial typology of the main theater space nested between front-of-house and back-of-house spaces, the project’s massing strategy starts with a reclustering of diverse programs into BOH and FOH spaces, interlocked with each other though actual or metaphorical “stages”, where most public activities would happen.
1/32”=1” core-and-mass study model within a group site model
Assembly study of back-of-house and frontof-house programs’arrangements
While three cores situate at three corners of the building as anchor points, the building has a transfer column system to change dense column grid within music classrooms and labs to open column grid within main performance spaces. The lower part of the building have a 20x20 ft dense column grid, while in the upper part, the column grid transits into a 40x40 column grid.
structural model study
1/32”=1’
In addition to the interlocking assembly within the building interior, two ground entrances are booleaned out to create welcoming concaving urban gestures for the public to enter. The roof of the buiding also formed as a convexing operatiion, creating a unqiue skyline and serving as the roof of the dining hall for students.
1/16”=1’ final model entrance view
1/32”=1’ massing study within site context
The main theater formed as a Ellipsoid, with a seres of arch-shaped trusses served as main structural supports that transfer load vertically into the floor trusses underneath. The entire floor under the main theater all supported with trusses is functioned as service spaces with back-of-house storages.
1/16”=1’Final model theater space
Materiality: 3D-printed PLA
Main theater structural model study and connection detail
Main theater interior view from the audience’s side
Exterior view of the main theater located right next to the neiboorhood building’s rooftop
Elevation Composition Drawing
The composition of the building enclosure near these two types of spatial boundaries is designed to alternate between opaque and transparent, inviting the public to experience a series of sensory and atmospheric transitions between enclosed and open space.
In facade design, the projectinvestigates how to balance different needs for cultural and educational programs through establishing two types of boundaries: “hard shell” precast concrete panels that isolates the audience within an enclosed volume that announces its iconic existence to its urban surrounding, and “soft skin” double-skin curved glass that allows for spatial flexibility and visual participation with the public circulation.
Composite facade system design
1/2”=1’ facade detail study model Museum board, Acrylic, 3D-printed PLA
02 Circuit on the Creek
CORE IV Housing Studio Project
Instructor: Warren Techentin
Group Work with Eric Wang
Site: Chelsea, Boston MA
“Circuit on the Creek: Adaptive Microgrid Housing” reimagines social housing as both infrastructure and collective ecology. Located in Chelsea, Massachusetts—a post-industrial neighborhood facing climate stress—the project embeds decentralized energy systems within a housing typology designed for resilience and equity. Between each two housing units, a central solar chimney organizes structure, circulation, and climate performance: photovoltaic panels feed a shared community battery, enabling the cluster to operate autonomously while regulating daylight, airflow, and thermal comfort. Housing units aggregate around this vertical energy spine, echoing the rhythm of historic Captain’s Row along Marginal Street.
In crisis conditions, the system transforms into an autonomous civic hub, redistributing stored power and converting communal spaces into shelters and kitchens. By fusing architecture with infrastructure, the project envisions housing as an agent of environmental performance, energy democracy, and shared urban care.
Site microgrid system analysis
Unit microgrid system analysis
1’=1?16” Process models testing units and aggregation
Located along Mill Creek in Chelsea, Massachusetts, the project reclaims a post-industrial waterfront long shaped by infrastructural neglect and risk of electrical shortage. Once lined with the historic Captain’s Row houses—distinguished by their columned and seafaring façades—the area’s built fabric reflected both domestic pride and maritime labor. Thus, the project reinterprets this legacy through a new housing typology that integrates microgrid infrastructure within rhythmic structural bays.
Each housing unit in “Circuit on the Creek” operates as a microcosm of the project’s environmental and social logic. Organized around a vertical solar chimney, the unit mediates light, air, and heat through passive ventilation and adjustable shading layers. The front façade opens toward communal courtyard that encourage social exchange, while the rear interfaces with the shared microgrid spine, integrating photovoltaic, water, and data conduits. This dual orientation—domestic to one side, infrastructural to the other—redefines the apartment as both a living space and an active component of an urban energy network.
Housing Unit worm-eye Axon
Housing Unit Combo A Plan
1’=1/4” Unit Section Model
The building is framed by a prefabricated concrete column-and-slab structure that provides thermal mass and accelerates on-site assembly, while CLT panels form interior floors, walls, and balcony decks for lightweight adaptability. The façade integrates operable glazing that modulates daylight and airflow through passive means. Together, these systems construct a breathable envelope—one that performs as both climatic mediator and social interface within the microgrid network.
Building detail wall section
03 Civic Mat/Market Mat
Stu 1102 Project 2
Instructor:Prof. Angela Pang
Half Semester Individual Work Site: Chinatown, Boston
The architecture of the market is merely the stage for this enthralling drama. What if the civic center is designed as a market hall that captivates mass consumption of public activities?
The project’s site located in a dense urban area nearby Boston Chinatown and a tunnel. The existing building is an abandoned parking lot that used to have Chinese restaurants, family-own stores, and supermarket on the ground floor. The existing parking lot has a series of long ramps running across the entire length of the site as major circulation. To protect partial memory of the site ‘s history yet to make famility unfamiliar, the new civic center keep the original ramp circulation yet transformed the program into a collective market hall, with mainly three types of programs: Informal market, open commounity workshop area and a series of small stores and shops. Respecting the existing materiality of neiborhood street, the street elevffation of the civic center displays a max of birck and glass volumes, along with a long stair running through mixed materiality and lead the visitors all the way to the bonquet hall at the highest floor.
1/32”=1” and 1/16”=1’ massing study
Materiality: Bristol, Acrylic, 3D-printed PLA
Circulation Diagram from ground to top
1:32 massing in site model
The existing parking lot has a series of long ramps running across the entire length of the site as major circulation. The new civic center keep the original ramp circulation yet transformed the program into a collective market hall, with informal market at the ground floor plaza, open commounity workshop area within glass enclosures, and a series of individual stores in brick enclosures.
1/8”=1’ Physical model street elevation Materiality: Foam Core, Museum board, 3D print PLA
Respecting the existing materiality of neiborhood street, the street elevffation of the civic center displays a max of birck and glass volumes, along with a long stair running through mixed materiality and lead the visitors all the way to the bonquet hall at the highest floor.
1/8”=1’ Physical model street elevation
Materiality: Foam Core, Museum board, 3D print PLA
The project choreographs a dialogue between transparency, opacity, and structure through a rhythmic steel arch framework. The exposed steel arches define both the spatial grid and the visual rhythm of the civic interior, framing views that shift between open and enclosed. Along the street elevation, alternating layers of glass and brick create a play of reflection and depth—offering glimpses into public spaces while preserving moments of privacy.
04 Revolving Courthouse
ARCH 212 Studio Project
Instructor: Gia Daskalakis
Individual Work
Site: Kranzberg Arts Foundation,St.Louis
Researching precedent courtroom designs, I found the correlation between the increase of public involvement in civil justice and the openness of courtroom and circulation space within courthouses over human history. Based on understanding of such correlations, Three scales of courtrooms are thus designed to fulfill programmatic needs of different court cases, interconnected and vertically circulated to the top, allowing the public to increase a sense of participation in court justice by visually engaging with dynamic views.
The creation of public-shared space and dynamic vertical circulation within the central spatial volume encourages civil citizens’ diverse view within the courthouse. Within the central public stairwell, each staircases rotates upward to allow multi-angled visual engagment among diverse human groups participated in the court decision-making process. Three scales of courthouses with kinetic marble facades are arranged under the same rotating geometric logic with cutted edges or sloped roof to engage with natural lighting and public witness from the building exterior.
Besides the central circulation system, Public can also witness process of small civil cases through selective openings within the interlocking space between two courtrooms at each floor. Such interlocking relationship of small and middle scale courtrooms circulation from the bottom of the building to the top. The idea is not to expose privacy within court cases, but to enhance a sense of witnessing within the public’s mind and help them get more familiar with the court case process to enhance their participation in advocating for court justice and openness in the future.
Third Floor
Section drawing of interior public circulation
Detail section of facade tectonics
05 Collective Memory Institution
ARCH 411 Studio Project
Instructor: Chandler Ahrens
Group Work with Manaphy Wang
Site: Earth City, Missouri
How do technical individuals adapt to new formation of collective memory that is more equal and accurate? Collective Memory Institution is a speculative proposal on an alternative evolution of the formation of human collective memory for the year 2045. Mimicing the human neurological process of agggregating individual neuro signals into memorial information, the project’s form and program are developed under a three-step logistic: deconstructin, agggregation, and collective.
Modular units of factories that interconnected in assembly lines of producing new memory machines of transmitter and encoder that originated from the telautograph in 1904 World’s Fair exposition and contemporary EEG technology that collects human brain’s neuron stmulation. Machines then delivered to the collective memorial center for collecting individual memory, and eventually serve for the ceremony hall and plaza that celebrates collective memory.
The project starts from a speculation project that transform a historical machine to a new invention in 2045. Our selection is Telautograph from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Telautograph is a early version of fax machine that uses electric circuits as power source to deliver written information. Apply similar binary machanism, our new serts of memory machine use the aggregation of human neural signals to generate virtual sensual experience that people can immserse within.
Composition model of collective memory institution showing the evoution of individual memory to collective ceremony
24” x 24” 3D-printed physical model; assembled through transparent PLA-printed components
Evolution of institution program from the formal deconstruction between old and new machine, and the programs of factory, stroage,, research, and ceremony deparments within the institute
The program arrangement evolves from spatial and scale hierarchy among different components of the compositional study. Underneath the river, memory gallery invites public to immersively visit collections of individual memory within the database collection managed by the research institute situated atop. The grey part composiitional model evolves into storage and deliver department.
Exploded diagram of envisioning program based on compositional model
Section showing the circulation among ceremony, research, and storage departments
The collective memory exterior plaza is specifically designed for significant social event in the future that both are influenced and will influence huma community. Water holographic projection technology would allow transmission of individual memory to public memory, enabling the audience to sensually experience others’ personal experience within collective social events
Detail plan of ceremony hall and its surrounding office spaces from lab and ceremonial staff and the storage floors on its back
View of ceremony hall interior at the highest part of the institutionand the use of water holographic projection; researved for personal rememberance and family events
View of exterior ceremony plaza
Shenzhen Luohu Cultural Center
SU2024 Summer Intern
Competition work with Ran Yue, Yudi Luo, Weiheng Zhao, and Tianzei Li
Luohu Cultural Center aims to transform a singular cultural building into a diverse and multifaceted civic space. The main structure is elevated above the ground to create a hub that connects Hubei Ancient Village and the plaza. A network of three-dimensional streets and alleys links the ancient village, shopping centers, and other nearby structures, passing through various cultural function clusters, channeling the vibrant urban life toward the elevated plaza and rooftop garden. I was in charge with narrative drawings and diagrams in this one-month competition project.
Plaza Axonmetric
Narrative Section
Physical Model
SMOOTH HOUSE: CONSTRUCTION PHASE
SU2022 Summer Intern and Research Assistant
Instructor: Hongxi Yin, Daniel Hellmuth, Roy Wall
Collaborative Work with Zitao Zhang, Ange Long, Chenyue Wang, and Jesse Price
During the construction phase of SMOOTH house in the 2023 Solar Decathlon Chanllenge, which is a smart home for occuptional therapy healing that constructs with bamboo for mjaor structural components, I was responsible for major structural and architectural drawings in the construction documents, such as foundation plan and the design of wall section, as well as design research of the healing garden feature such as the exterior green wall within the building.
Emerging Planetarism
SU2023 The 13th Architectural DigitalFUTURES Shanghai Summer Workshop
Instructor: Shajay Bhooshan | Vishu Bhooshan | Taizhong Chen | Jianfei Chu from ZHACODE Team
Collaborative Work with Jingwen Gu, Qingqing Yang
Emerging Planetarism
Architectural Geometry combines traditional geometry-based structural analysis with modern mathematics and computer graphics. During the workshop, our team collaborately used the computer-aided design software Maya and ZHA CODE’s self-developed software to complete the design and flattening of hyperboloid geometry, and made a large number of manual models.
2023 The 13th Architectural DigitalFUTURES Shanghai Summer Workshops
In addition to group learning, everyone completed the design prototype construction work of the first attempt to combine flat metal bending and foam hot wire cutting technology.
Nevermelt™ Faux Ice
Material
Experiment
SP2025 Faux: Design, Performance and Perception
Instructor: Martin Bechthold
Teammate with Chuchu Qi and Yu Han
Nevermelt™ is a speculative synthetic material designed to store memory in a post-glacial, hyper-tropical future. Inspired by the symbolic role of ice as a vessel for preservation, Nevermelt™ is a translucent, programmable solid that encases emotional, environmental, and digital traces. Each module integrates micro-textured silicone, recycled biopolymers, and embedded climate and memory chips. It is cast at ambient temperature, remoldable, and infinitely recyclable. Functioning as both interface and artifact, Nevermelt™ transforms public spaces—museums, walkways, data centers—into archives of feeling and memory, proposing a new paradigm of material permanence for the post-ice age.
