DIAN YU PORTFOLIO Academic Works

PORTFOLIO OF DIAN YU

M.S. Architecture and Urban Design

Columbia University

Selected Works 2013-2019

Recreation of Suprematic Composition,Kazimir Malevich

Malevich abstracts existing realities into consitutive form.Reality is reduced to a few thick black lines and geometric motifs.The recreation attempt to put the motifs into certain context.

Prologue

Malevich pursued Supermatism,he painted a series of paintings Suprematic Composition in early 20 century.His paintings completely abandoned the semantic and descriptive part of painting, and the presentation of threedimensional space as well.He used the most simple geometric space with unrestrained composition to deconstruct space, forming a rotating or centrifugal movement.The flat geometry in his painting is so pure that some would say it does not have any sense of volume and depth.

However, in my point of view, Malevich's exploration of relationship among shape, color and space has quite profound meaning. In the left painting, different-size geometrical shapes vary in lines, colors or any other elements. They are staggered, overlapped or avoided by each other. Regard the painting as a plain space.Two thin lines in the center split the space in four parts.The upper part seems more stable than the lower. The big black block is like a deep pit while the red circle is like a giant tower. Oblate parallelograms stand like a wall forest. I found that I naturally regard the thin blue line as a deep gap while the light yellow one is a high boundary to me.

So, maybe the color (warm or cold) is represents the concave and convex of the space? Maybe the direction of each line is pointing to some infinite space out of scene? I think the simpleness of geometry is not crudity. on the contrary, as Ventury says, "Good simpleness brings diversity". Geometry itself is an exaggeration of high formality with clear boundaries,all experiences and emotions blend in this enclosure. The utilzation of geometry can be various and rich, as well as further deformations,cuts collisions.This portfolio is a discussion on geometry based on the views above.

Roots Fabrics and Typologies of La Plata City, Argentina

Tri-Angle Iron Museum Design in Anshan, China

Agglomeration Village Kindergarten Design in Guangzhou, China

Half of BIRD (Beloved Inactive Residential District) Elderly Community Center Design of Beijing Hutong Reventing

Grids on Bulk

Renovation Project for Sugar Refinery

SCUT Urban Design Studio, Spring 2017

Instructor: Miaoxi Zhao(SCUT)

Collaborator: Haoting Pang

Due to the complicated history, Chinese industrial experienced a bumpy development course. The industrial buildings' styles under such circumstance is various as well.Starting from Chinese Westernize Movement, a lot of factories introduced western-style buildings while introducing their advanced technology, most of which is classical and complex at that time, including this project, Huaqiao Sugar Refinery (HSR) in Guangzhou, China.

Buildings in HSR includes traditional Chinese style soviet style and so on. The project studys HSR's history and finally experimentally endows the old, disordered and different-styles buildings in the site with a unified, systematic form of grids in contrast, reorganizing the site as well as upgrading the functions.The combination modes between the “girds” and the “bulk” is actually a reflection of the old and the new, the complex and the pure.

Huaqiao Sugar Refinery Experienced Vicissitudes

Huaqiao Sugar Refinery (hereinafter referred to as "HSR") is located beside a river bank in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province,witnessing historical changes of Chinese industry. HSR was the product of Westernization Movement in China,and reached its pinnacle in the late 1970s. After the Reform and Opening Up, the rapid development of new industries made Chinese sugar mines lose their advantages of labor force and

1. The Westernization Movement in China promotes a series of industries' establishment.

2. HSR gradually began to refine raw sugar and handle export trade.

3. HSR imported a lot of

4. The reconstructed Cultural Wharf became ghost town and shut down as well.

cropland, gone declined one after another,including HSR. HSR finally moved out and changed its operation mode.Although reconstructed as Tangren Cultural Wharf in recent years,the site is surrounded by people with low education level, this area are lack of development conditions to serve as a cultural place.The cultural wharf shut down in only 2 years.

TImeline of the HSR's Development

The Refinery have experienced rise and fall in 20 century, peaking at 1970s and waning at 1990s.Its vicissitudes were closely related with Chinese great historic changes.

During the process of learning from the West, HSR borrowed a lot of western-style buildings.The building are messy and complex with both industrial style and Soviet style coexisting.,casually scattering in the site. of labor force and cropland, gone declined one after another,including HSR.HSR finally moved out and changed its

operation mode.Although reconstructed as Tangren Cultural Wharf in recent years,the site is surrounded by people with low education level, this area are lack of development conditions to serve as a cultural place.The cultural wharf shut down in only 2 years.

Mapping in Grid

Imagine the buildings and structures are overlaped by a grid which gives the site organization and structure. The original structures can fit in the simple grid despite their complex appearances,with which the new artificial girds added will bring a style collision.

Buildings In Grid

Put buildings diverse on scales and styles into the spatial grid,with each unit cube 6*6*6 meters.According to various purposes and users' identities,different streamlines exist among buidings,which can be organized by grid as well.

New Functions & Rearranged Streamlines

Add new functions to the buildings and structures,the streamlines are rearranged therewith. Mix up new streamlines and the original ones,a holistic network appears.Establish the final complete grid basing on this.

Overall Grid Distribution In Site Corrisponding the Streamlines

Tracing back each of function and streamline to the locations of relavent buildings in site, a fuction &flow mapping is eventually obtained. The grid distribution is exactly corrisponding to the functions & flows, reorganizing the site, despite the buildings' distribution. Therefore some buildings will be bridged, pentrated, or completely enclosed by the grid,creating various experience spaces therefrom.

The follow four scenarios are typical ones that can well illustrate grid forms in the project, relationship with the buildings and experience spaces produced therefrom.

Scenery

In this semi-open converted factory, space is divided into 5 stripes and 2 floors with cubes randomly scattered on it.

Activity

There exists both ground and sky, strip and block spaces for people to stay and walk through.

Lights

Lights are provided by lamps on both wings of factory.

Grid

The grid includes corridors and "grid cloud".

Form

Few grids touch the ground,and most grids are in the air.

Location

The case buiding is located at the north end of site.

Scenery

This is an openspace theme playground at the power supporting area where exists lawn and several chemneys.

Activity

People can rest and enjoy the river-view on the playground. The chimneys also serves as a landscape sketch which can go inside.

Lights

Lights are provided by lamps on top of chimneys and windows of the adjacent factory.

Grid

The grid includes corridors/clouds wraping the chimenys to connect each planes.

Form

Grids are like cloud clusters and channels in the air. Few grids touch the ground.

Location

The case is the outdoor space located at the center of the site.

Scenery

A gallery to restore the scene of sugar refining.People can visit it by walking on the air corridor.

Activity

Workers on the ground refining while tourists in the air visting.

Lights

Lights are provided by spoylights on the ceiling.

Grid

The grid serves as an independent exhibition hall.

Form

All grids are in the air.

Location

The case buiding is located at the center of the site.

Scenery

The waterfront zone where are plenty of industrial structures with a storage and a commercial comlex in it.

Activity

Shopping,visiting the storage and leisure activities in the waterfronts.Tourists can interact with the industrial structures.

Lights

Lights are provided by street lamps and spotlights on buidings.

Grid

The grid is a complex whole attached to the main building.

Form

Grids gather like a cloud cluster with a corridor extending outside.

Location

The case buiding is located at the south end of site.

Corridor:

Serving as a passage connecting two ends of the factory.

Ancillary Structure:

A "grid cloud" gazebo which has planes in different height.

Frame Room: Creating gray space for people to stay or walk through.

Playground: Kids can shuttle and climb up and down in such a box.

Corridors in the air: Continuos Conneting two defferent buildings in a plane.

Veins: Conneting planes of different heights.

Gallery:

People walk on which to visit the exhibition of the old sugar-refining process.

Decorative Frame:

Creating gray space for people to walk below.

Room&Collums:

A semi-enclosed space adjacent to the original building for people to stay.

Connector:

A semi-open complex connecting two buildings.

Shell:

Wraping the original structure abd offer a new streamline surrounding it.

Gangway: Long terrace outextending above river bank.

Spatial Framework Deconstruction Re-constructing Social Networks

A traditional industrial built form is critically conserved by maintaining the outlook yet deconstructing the function. Deconstruction itself can be formalized in a spatial framework, which in turn imply and construct a form. Form, in this deconstructed way, is misled with the flow-made function.

Form/function, Historic/Contextalist, once-workflow/new-tourflow, and Solid/void are mutually mixed in a way that neither is compromised or completely.

I want to call it Deconstructed Conservation

Life Aquatic

Conserving Water Culture of Can Tho City

GSAPP Urban Design Studio III, Spring 2019

Instructor: Kate Orff, Dilip da Cunha, Geeta Mehta, Thaddeus Pawlowski, Julia Watson, Linh K. Pham

Collaborator: Junyu Cao, Zeyi Jiang, Ashley Louie

What if landscape and cultural conservation could be a driver for adapting water-based livelihoods into resilient growth?

The oldest urban area in Can Tho, Binh Thuy is the home to historic temples and heritage sites that exist alongside traditional stilt houses adjacent to the water. As the city rapidly urbanizes, canals become roads, embankments displace stilt houses, and impermeable surfaces replace green space. Can Tho is at risk of losing its water identity and is more vulnerable to land subsidence and flooding.

The project aims to seek an alternative future of Can Tho City. Landscape and cultural conservation can be a driver for adapting water-based livelihoods into resilient growth. Conservation goes beyond preserving historic landmarks; it identifies vernacular patterns—wetlands, canals, dikes, docks, floating structures, and stilt houses—as cultural assets that protect the water-retaining landscape, promote biodiverse habitats, foster productive aquaculture, extend productive green spaces, diversify jobs, and prioritize locally-harvested food, while achieving new urban development and growth.

Connecting the city center and historical core, various activities happen on / along Binh Thuy River. However, the mode of urbanization here is mainly much neglected here. The cultural heritage is blocked by the embankment, the only crossing bridge has an only 1-meter-width sidewalk.

Compared with the other one, Hau River is much more activated. Aquaculture and agro-tourism has been booming. There is a highly efficient fish farming The river also load a large amount of commuters and tourists. All of these activities are opportunities.

land prioritized, the value of water is

Unfriendly Dock

farming & marketing process happening.

Existing Waterfront Condition

By researching and analyzing the existing waterfront typologies of Can Tho City, a reflection of the relationship between the people and water arises. Which ones are negative, and which ones are celebrating the nature? This leads to the revaluation of local elements, and inspires us to think about conservation as growth.

Methodology

8 local elements that valuable to be conserved are identified, and become an alphabet for the further renovation. These vernacular patterns can be combined familiar with, an adaptive design will be developed as a uniform language, and thereby achieve two outcomes: Let water in, in terms of embracing the

Outcome - GROWTH

Water-Based Development

combined and adapted into productive and resilient growth strategies throughout Can Tho. Basing on the vernacular techniques that local people are the nature instead of fighting it; and water-based development in terms of new housing typology and economic mode, etc.

The renovated adaption with vernacular techniques will be applied to the site according to various conditions.

For the westside, the neglected canals will be reintroduced, while new canal being created, forming a complete network; high ground develpment will be contructed next to them as a strategy for urban agriculture growth.

For eastside, instead of blocking the water out with concrete embankment, a radient waterfront edge will be created with renovated silted houses upon, serving as an aquaculture farm base.

Adaptive design is applied to different site conditions. For where the world bank wall has been half built, we install terrace and outreach platforms to purify water still needs to be kept out, we build at least one more story, and when the flood comes, the wall of house becomes the wall of water. But more importantly, during the wet season, it serves as a water retention park. Existing half stilt houses will be gradually renovated to ment model that can grow along the riverfront. As for reintroducing canals, there will also be high ground construction along

purify water passing through and celebrate the waterfront view. For the area built out by stilt houses with even much more houses behind, meaning importantly, for stilt houses with green space behind, we build this gradient edge. During the dry season, it’s public space with playful topography;

Experimental Site

The site is located in an abandoned land adjacent to an existing old urban village area. Site Specific sftrategies based on the adaptive techniques

techniques are applied to seek its opportunity on both conservation and development.

A sequence of groynes will be built to both capture the sediment and change the water flow to let the water in.

Reintroduced / New

Create a new canal to connect the existing make use of its ecological function.

Mangrove in Phasing

Productive Landscape

Utilizing the canals as an irrigation system, arrange multi-level productive landscape along the canal, these would be an mixture of palm tree, fruit trees and rice

Water-based House Technique

Use vernacular materials. Hire the skilled local potential total resident population to solve

Activated Attraction + Community

Conserve the church in site by renovation and public space system of this community.

one into our big system to protect but also

High Ground Construction

Use the cut and fill strategy to build the high ground area to set the foundation for new housing development and water retention area.

local residents as the first 15% of the employment and resettlement problem.

and programming, as the entrance of the

Gradient Typologies

Develop a gradient housing typology, which has their different relationship with water based on their characteristics, giving resident and visitors various experience.

Water-based Economic Growth

During the dry season, this could be a productive area for rice paddies; during the monsoon season, it is deeper as a river to support water-based transportation.

Dry Season

During the dry season, this forms a productive landscape area for rice paddies. The most important connection is community corridor, these elevated wood decks can function both as gathering space but also rainwater collecting point, which could embrace the existing urban pattern into the new resilient livelihood.

Wet Season

During the wet season, the canal could be deeper as a river to support water-based transportation. People could choose their familiar or interested living pattern but also could be protected from flooding in the future. Life Aquatic could be an alternative way to develop the site, as well as the Can Tho City.

Appletopia

Revitalizing the Apple Industry in Hudson Valley

Urban Design Studio II, Fall 2018

Instructor: Lee Altman, Wendy Adringa, Jerome Haferd, Justin Moore, Michael Murphy, Christopher Kroner, David Smiley

Collaborator: Shuyuan Li, Peiqing Wang, Yinzhe Zhang

Apples form one of the most iconic industries of the Hudson Valley. However, apple orchards have experienced a drastic decrease of 26% in the past 20 years due to increasingly unaffordable operating costs, labor shortage, a lack of facilities, waste disposal, etc. For the remaining orchards in the valley, two existing models promise economic sustainability: “pickyour-own” farms and hard cider tours.

Based on these trends, we propose to build upon the apple industry’s more public aspects, taking advantage of existing infrastructures. Our proposal consists of (a) A series of multi-functional “hubs”, constructing for making apple

processing and adding value products and providing professional training; (b) Expanded hard cider companies cooperating with apple cultivation and engaging the public into cider making process; (c) A trail system tying together these two components plus apple follies celebrating the apple culture.

By adapting to contemporary models that combine agricultural production with experiential participation and recreation, apple industry in Hudson Valley can reinvent itself as an economically viable, environmentally sustainable, and socially engaging, while remaining an integral part of the valley’s identity.

Hub

The hub is multi-functional. It also has an education center to address labor shortage issue. Education center provides professional training for labors. Some of them will work at farms, others may work at cideries or just in the hub.

Unfolded Apple Trail

The apple trail is knowledged with apple varieties, history of NYC apple cultivation, hard cider processing. The trail also serves as a timeline. Tourists will activities such as apple blossom, pick your own apple and skating, skiing in different seasons. The trail has the richness in both time and space dimension.

Phase 1

Pilot trails based on pilot hubs in Ulster County.

Phasing Of Apple Trail

2

Expand hub system to Columbia County. Connect apple trail to further trails.

3

Build trail system in

Valley.

The trail incorporates and connects at least one hub, several apple farms, hard cideries and gradually to other existing tourism assets.

Typology Of Follies On The Trail

Diverse follies are designed based on the topography. Embracing the nature, follies can encourage the public to play outdoor. During

will become apple experts as exploring the trail. It is as well arranged with seasonality analysis. Visitors can see various views and take part in varioius dimension.

Ulster Trail

In the future, more hubs will be installed in Hudson Valley region. Based on the criteria, 1000 acres need one hub, so there will be a new hub in Hudson City, which will form a hub network with current hubs. We also propose new trails based on the principle that each trail incorporates and connects one hub, farms, hard cideries and local tourism assets. Therefore, the new trail system will not only benefit Ulster county and Columbia county, but the whole Hudson Valley could celebrate apple culture. Currently, institutions of the region are providing training programs for new farmers. A growing trend exists among young people to be farmers. On the other hand, most of the current farmer owners’ descendants are not willing to take this job after the elderly retire, which making them quite worried. We see the opportunity to communicate the human resources. Well-trained young people could bring new thoughts and lively operating modes, with more sensitivity to changes of markets and trends.

Renovation For Hard Cidery

Hard cideries will be renovated aiming for the expansion of recreational function in terms of both space and time. By intersecting functional grids and a movable sloping roof shed, Bad Seed, the second largest hard cider company in HV will become a pub where the public can be educated, have fun and engage the “apple to cider” industry.

Indoor:

Expose apple-related process to the public by intersecting worker and tourist streamlines, and

whereby encourage the public to engage and be educated.

could be promoted.

Spiraling Roots

Fabrics and Typologies of La Plata City

Urban Seminar III, Fall 2018

Instructor: Richard Plunz

Collaborator: Yinzhe Zhang

La Plata is a new city founded in 1882, following a combination of traditional and progress interpretation Spanish American colonial law, which provides it an orderly, neat urban fabric. However, zooming into block scale, the layout of the buildings under the existing skeleton lines is found to be unreasonable for residents, with low quality of ventilation and lighting, inconvenient circulation, lack of accessibility of green space, and low living density.

The seminar is to select a 800*800 Sq.ft "window" in a certain city, and dig the problems in the existing typical urban

fabric of it, then propose an alternative form of fabric, considering the potential of the city density growth.

Based on the analysis, we try our best to maintain the traditional scale and skeleton lines of the city, meanwhile propose a new block form, with 15-feet wide individual modules of commercial use along the streets, and high-rise residential buildings rotated according to the light in the center of the block. With the proposal, there will be a better living experience, better connectivity, better landscape and public space, and a higher density of the block.

Existing Block Condition

Lines

Reconnecting

Block Structure Evolution

Instead of wiping out the original fabric, some buildings are extracted to open up the block. The buildings are reorganized in a more orderly way as the base, forming several entrances and promoting the accessibility to the park. Four residential buildings are added on the base, which are rotated to the north for better lighting. Two sets of structure lines are applied and overlayed.

The two sets of structure lines are linked by spiraling, with an elevator as the core. Each building includes a mixed use base, which has larger height, and a 15-story residential tower.

In order to keep the sense of scale along the street, the frontage width of the buildings are not changed on the first two floors. Instead, the units of the base are uniformed in 25 x 50 feet, and piled up differently on different spots.

Elevator

Households

Unit Renovation of High-Rise Residential Tower

3 Households + Terrace 3 Households

Most floors have 4 households, while the top 5 floors diminished in consideration of balance of form. The top floor is cut down to 3 households. The transition area in the middle serves as terraces.

Terrace

Household Plan

The grey part is the elevator core. Spiraling, 4 households gradually become 3 households.

The grey space generated by spiraling is utilized as public terrace. Four pavilions are built on the central lawn and connected by bridges.

Statistical Analysis

Total Project Area

Total Building Lots

Number of Floors

Total Building Footprint

Building Lot Coverage

Total Number of Dwellings

Subject Lot Area/Dwellings

Gross Floor Area

Heights & Setback

Usable Open Space

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/apr/08/la-plata-cathedral-argentina-history-cities-50-buildings

2. http://www.newgeography.com/content/003530-the-beauty-urban-planning-ground

3. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/co-supreme-court/1001447.html

4. https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6296/

5. http://www.fau.usp.br/iphs/abstractsAndPapersFiles/Sessions/05/FEDELE.pdf

6. http://www.lpccds.org/

7. https://pinerivertimes.com/articles/45818

8. http://online.encodeplus.com/regs/laplata-co/export2doc.aspx?pdf=1&tocid=068

9. http://laplatalibertycoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/LPC_LandUseCode_module1_112917.pdf

10. https://www.durangotelegraph.com/news/top-stories/the-lay-of-the-land/

Tri-Angle

Iron Museum Design in Anshan, China

Studio Alpha Open Project, Summer 2017 Instructor: Kun Zhang, Jianing Zhang, Xinyu Cao Individual Work

What would happen to the site after an origin of resource being exploited out? With the rapid pace of industrialization, it seems we have never think about this question. Lots of coal mines in Shanxi became shambles, the worked-out oil field in Jiangxi, China even became a wasteyard. How come old essential resources fall into useless ruins? What should happen to these origins? How deep and long should we think when we build something? Taking future's parking problem and modes of transportation into

consideration, Mantattan already begins building parking lots far away from downtown instead of on the slope.

The design is a museum rethinking about mine in the long-term. It abstracted inversion of the mountain’s altitude as two reversed triangle. As time goes by, the museum will change with environment. But it is always bedded here into the mountain like a rock as a symbol of its dramatic history.

+280 To -222: The Inversion of Dagu Mountain

Dagushan Pit is located in Dagu Mountain,Anshan,which is knowned as the city of iron in China.The iron ore resource was firstly discovered during the Japnese economic aggresion to the Northeast of China.They began mineral propsecting secretly from 1909,and plundered violently Chinese material resources.

Process of Inversion

The

In 1953,China started the Great Leap Forward Movement which is extemly radical.The whole nation is smelting steel.Dagu Mountain kept being mined and cosumed,and the elevation continued reducing.

1906: Japan enhanced the economic aggression.

1916: Japan begun to mine the mountain at 280 m height.

1949: New China was founded, Anshan became the city of Iron.

2008: The Mine went extented.

2011: The Mine turns to a -222 m pit.

2025: The mineral resources in the Dagushan Pit will be deplepted.

2050: The mineral resources in the Anshan City will be deplepted.

What should we do with the pit in the future?

Mountain never stoped its height reduction in a century. The high mountain gradually became a deep

City Surrounded by Mountains

Types Of Iron Ore

Most common ores are magnetite.The resourses export to countries all over the world.

The steel mills had been damaged during the wars. In December 1948, the Anshan Iron and Steel Company—also known as Angang—was founded. Production in the newly repaired steel plant resumed on July 9, 1949. Anshan became a formal administrative region under the Northeastern People's Government in November, 1949.

What would happen after the resources are completely exhausted? And what should happen?

This project attempts to and build a memorial to rethink exploitation of natural resources and recount the history of Chinese industry development.

Signifying the Historical Process of Dagushan Pit

The historic process of Dagu Mountain can be signified as 3 stages: triangle tokening Stage High Mountain; upslope tokening Stage Radical Movement; inverted triangle tokening Stage Pit.It is a climbing and inversion procedure.

Triangle can be abstracted as the protype from mountain's shapes in different historic stages.

Variants of Triangle

Possible expression forms of triangle are discussed above.Single or combination of triangle can create different volumes and spaces. Choose the propriate ones to compose the 3 stage.

Entrance of Stage 1

Triangles In the Mountain

Stage1: Towering triangle space creates an oppressing sensation.

Stage2: Visitors can comprehend the history exhibition while climbing the upslope.

Stage3: Inverted triangle is inserted into the mountain and splits each floors of museum,each part of which offers different scales of triangle and different scenarios.

Lobby

The lobby can serve as the area for performances, the public gatherings, etc. The first view of visitors after come down from the reception will be the giant, monumental triangle. Display rooms of different themes will surround the triangle.

Looking out of the window, visitors will see the current look of the pit, the exterior of the mine; looking down through the transparent floor, visitors will see the sectional decoration, i.e. the interial of the mine; looking up, they will see the sky.

States of Museum Overtime

As time goes by,the geomorphic and ecological environment condition of Dagu Mountain will change. The museum will always stand here recording all of these historic transitions, while its appearance changes therewith.

Geometry Agglomeration

Village Kindergarten Design in Guangzhou,China

SCUT Architecture Studio, Summer 2015

Instructor: Jianhua Chen

Individual Work

Undoubtedly, kids see the world in a different way from adults, and they process received information more abstractly and purely. The design discusses and summarizes possible processed results of kids, then match them to various geometries with diversiform colors and shapes,and emphasizes its artistic conception by utilizing light and shadow. Their combination brings rich experience space. It is an kindergarten of their agglomeration.

The design adequately considered kids' needs for growth. The waved belt creates elevation different and boundaries of public and private spaces, as well as hosting the series of geometry in the meantime. Plenty of interesting spaces come therewith. For instance, the kindergarten is a heavenly place for kids to climb up and down due to the slopes. The skylights provied kids abundant light. Kids can grow up healthily while playing with light and shadow.

World In Kids' Eyes

Kids 2-4 that first know the world.

Kids 4-5 having concept of threedemension.

Kids 5-6 that are most active & naughty.

Girls are more soft and sensitive.

Kids parented by intellectual.

Kids parented by workmen.

Kids with Complex family environment.

Kids are pure,they see things and deal with information in their own simplified ways which varies according to their different conditions.Lots of factors will influnence the results they abstract from objects,for example,age,gender,family background,etc.

Space Grammar

Combine the processed results of kids and match them to certain geometric shapes. The experiencing spaces are created as above. The spaces are basic grammar to compose the kindergarten.

Scenarios in Series

An undulant axis winds around to create perimeter walls and connect the independent spaces into one system.The space it enclosed also frames a series of intimate gather/play areas.

Ambient Belt Hosting Interior Space

The main part of kindergarten is the ambient belt.Lots of space prototypes are loaded on it. Kids can walk, climb the slope or stairs of the rolling ground due to varying elevation. The ceiling is rolling as well, skylight on which creating a rich play of light and shadow. The corresponding protptypes are shown on the right.

远辰 Far-E

日光鼎盛 Daylight abundant 如你身载风流光影 You're wearing flow shadows 狂热与孤寂 Craze and solitude/ 重叠回映 Interplays

在无处落脚的人海里 Stranded in crowd

你的停靠成为岛屿 You become an island

成为陆地 Become a terrene

成为具体 Become concreteness

Play of Light and Shadow Indoor Light is most essential for kids' growth, kindergarten should be light-filled. In this project, plenty of skylights are set on the ceiling influencing each other. Light shines through space and is blocked out by certain walls,creating a rich artistic conception.

Half Enclosure As Playground hosting Gathering Activities

The slope,stairs and walls enclose a grey area to compose a playground, hosting kids' recreational activities.This is the centration of geometry agglometration.Activity room is embodied in the enclosure

Sections

Sction the belt around the central playground. We can see the ground and ceiling rolls up and down, bringing rich changes of activity experience and light.

Light Terrace: Scenario above the ambient belt. Skylight pouring down,kids can play trumpoline here.

Scenario below the ambient belt. Kids can look up/down to each other.Less light makes it more mysteious.

Playground is the centration of geometric shapes,a place of sports.

Activity room is at the center of playground,enclosed by the belt.Kids have their enetertainment eduction here.

Half of House,Half of BIRD

Beloved Inactive Residential District

Elderly Community Center Design Under Beijing Hutong Reventing

Competition of Baitasi Reventing, Summer 2016 Instructor: Jingheng Lao Collaborator: Jing Wang

My Work: All pictures and thesis composing in this portfolio

The past life crowded without lights in night,even take a bath which must go two hutong outside the bathhouse, but used to live, everything is very convenient. At that time,Often hear the sound of the whistle, when the wind blows and the BaiTaSi copper bells clattered and memory in bright sunshine and green vines.Now the old neighbor moved a lot, and the house was empty. The activity in the alley has also become an endless chess room of mahjong,many familiar

activities were disapparing.Imperceptibly, a lot of gate shut". In the past can run to play in hutong, now hutong turned into a maze of walls and shops.Looking for neighborhood residents to participate in activities, stimulate the vitality of the neighborhood itself hidden, while continuing the local traditional culture, rich people's lives, our design ideas. "It is designed to serve the people who live in it" is our design concept.

Hutong, a Tragedy in the Trajectory of Socialism

As the Chinese capital, Bejing develops, the demolition of historic neighborhoods and displacement of once-secure families is becoming one of the city's most controversial issues. Especially in Zhongnanhai.1

The demolition of Beijing's historical courtyard alleyways, called Hutong, has long Is a typical representative of this situation. At the height of the city's headlong rush to modernity in the 1990s, about 600 Hutong were destroyed each year, displacing an estimated 500,000 residents. Seemingly overnight, the city was transformed from a warren of Ming dynasty-era neighborhoods into an ultramodern urban sprawl, pocked with gleaming office towers and traversed by eight-lane highways.

Remaining Hutong dwellers are worried, and for good reason -- they have a lot to lose. Their courtyard houses have survived centuries of war and revolution, the strain of collective ownership, and the turbulence of early economic reform. Passed down from generation to generation, they are often last-remaining monuments to entire family lines.

Patchy compensation schemes have left some displaced families insolvent. Unable to afford a new home in the old city, which is gentrifying almost as quickly as it's disappearing, they are forced to move into shoddy high-rise communities on the city's exurban outskirts.

The truth is, Chinese government do have worked on Hutong preservation. A proposal called Beijing City Master Plan was propounded and negotiated seriously between the officials and Hutong preservationists, which designated a large swath of Hutong in central Beijing as a "historical and cultural protected area” .However, it didn’t do much good as viewed on Google map. As Yao Yuan2, said, "they (the officials) don't have as much space as they need for their work. So they need to keep on expanding into the Old City, constructing new office buildings. And this brings problems."

The current situation of the Old City's people, land and housing, and the residents' living situation is relatively poor. Regarding meld of the style of the Old City with the

1. Zhongnanhai, is a formerly imperial garden in Beijing, China adjacent to the Forbidden City; it serves as the central headquarters for the Central government of China.

5. Henri Lefebvre(1901 –1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, and introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of social space

development strategy of a world city as of the utmost importance in Beijing's development, the original lifestyle of Hutong dwellers has always been ignored.

Capital, Power and Space

According to Henri Lefebvre5, "An existing space may outlive its original purpose and the reason which determines its forms, functions, and structures; it may thus in a sense become vacant, and susceptible of being diverted, reappropriated and put to a use quite different from its initial one." A recent and well-known case of this was the reappropriation of the Halles Centrales6, in 1969-71. For a brief period, the urban centre, designed to facilitate the distribution of food, was transformed into a gatheringplace and a scene of permanent festival -- in short, into a centre of play rather than of work -- for the youth of Paris.

market.

As Lefebvre writes in the Production of Space, “With the advent of modernity time has vanished from social space. It is recorded solely on measuring-instruments, on clocks, that are isolated and functionally specialized as this time itself. Lived time loses its form and its social interest -- with the exception, that is, of time spent working. Economic space subordinates time to itself; political space expels it as threatening and dangerous (to power). The primacy of the economic and above all of the political implies the supremacy of space over time.”

The same modernization that has deprived travel of its temporal aspect has likewise deprived it of the reality of space. The requirement of capitalism that is met by urbanism in the form of a freezing of life might be described, in Hegelian terms, as an absolute predominance of "tranquil side-by-sideness" in space over "restless becoming in the progression of time."

Whose Right to the City

Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution7 is a book that draws on the idea of Henri Lefebvre, about the need for a renewed and transformed urban life. Lefebvre dubbed this need for transformation of the urban landscape and life ‘right to the city’: a right that those producing and sustaining the city lack and must fight to claim. And Harvey’s main attempt in this book is to provide an anti-capitalist and revolutionary meaning to the ‘right to the city’; he sees the ‘right to the city’ as a collective struggle by all those that have a part in producing the city and creating the life in it, to claim the right to decide what kind of urbanism they want. Thus, the process of urbanization has become capitalistic, and a central feature for the reproduction of capitalism.

In addition, capitalist urbanization has another, even darker nature according to Harvey: the urban restructuring takes place through a process of ‘displacement and dispossession’. This means usually that poorer and less powerful populations are losing their place and space in the city. The commodification of the city and the ‘urban development along class lines’ is a global phenomenon. And it is a class phenomenon where the capitalist class uses predatory practices of exploitation and dispossession

over vulnerable populations diminishing, in this way, their capacity to sustain the necessary conditions for social reproduction.

In fact, the better the common qualities a social group creates, the more likely it is to be raided and appropriated by private profit-maximizing interests. So those who had created interesting and vibrant neighborhoods lose them, through the use of predatory practices, to upper class consumers and capitalists. The privatization of housing and commodification of the city (rent) which is based on the power of monopoly of private owners over assets has become the main predatory practice of capitalists against the low-income classes.

For an urban revolution, to be successful in our world of neoliberal globalization, Harvey argues that there are should be a strong and vibrant support from popular forces, the concept of work should entail the labour for the production and reproduction of an increasingly urbanized daily life, and an equal status should be given to struggles of the workers against the recuperation and realization of surplus value in their living spaces.

From Beijing Gentrification to Nostalgia with Memory

As says above, Beijing gradually enhances its speed as well as scale of urban renewal. Various sorts of city space has been transformed for commercial purposes,including traditional areas.The city is full of antiquity Chinese-style shops with giant English branches become ubiquitous everywhere. This kind of transformation undoubtedly has brought substantial commercial profits, but the total urban space is constant. The accomanying function removing also inevitblely undermined the normal lives of old residents in the meantime.What happens to the repalced original functions is a question worth pondering and reflecting.

With Beijing's culture of bird mapped onto, one essential function is Bird Market where bird-majority pets and pot plants are sold at.

The culture of bird can be traced back to Qing Dynasty. According to Yanjing (Old Beijng) Miscellanea8, " 京师人多养雀，街上闲行者有臂鹰者，有笼百舌者 , 游手无 事，出入必携。" That is, Beijing partisens like to keep birds of all sorts. The holding a birdcage, wearing a robe can be found strolling everywhere in every morning. Nowadys, Bird Culture is more related to the urbanization of Beijing and the Empty Nest Elderly Phenomenon. With younger generation all go outside of families to struggle for enteprise, the elderly are left home alone. Keeping birds provides them an approach of emotional transference and sustenance. In addition, communicating with neighbors, exercising during walking birds are also functions of Bird Culture. Under such background, bird market endures.

Normally, bird markets are common and often located in relatively prosperous areas in Hutong neiborhoods. More than 1 markets exists at certain intervals. Having such popularity, bird markets are deemed as a symbol of neighborhood friendship, and an integral part of Beijing partisens life.

Keeping Birds As A Culture in Hutong

The tradition of keeping a bird steeps a long history,and have been endowed with a new meaning under the rapid deve

Bird for BIRD (Beloved Inactive Residential District)

The culture of bird is greatly shown in Chinese movie Mr. Six8. Happened in some Hutong, the male lead, Mr. Six' s rebellious son Xiaobo seldom comes home, and Mr. Six keeps a bird Little Eight instead in order to sooth his lonely heart. Holding little eight, he seizes the last string that connects him with other dwellers in Hutong.

The reason that Hutong is so substantial to the dwellers' emotion bond is that, the scale of buildings and streets in Hutong is much smaller than ordinary urban area. Thus the psychological distance among neighbors is much smaller as well. The Hutong dwellers share a large proportion of daily life with each other.

Typical Examples of Renewal VS Removing

Nanluo Guxiang is the most famous renovated old space.It is traditional Beijing Hutong space at first,reconstructed to business street space.Sanlitun is a completely commercialized area.

Different Scales in Beijing Urban Area

Different physical scales will undoubtedly bring different mental feelings of people.

Bird markets are often located in relatively prosperous areas in Hutong neibouhoods.

Some bird markets open everyday, some only on the weekends. Attracting lots of visitors from all over the city, most customers are the elderly in the nearby neibourhoods.

Road Noad

The forms of bird markets are multiple but undisciplined. Some sellers choose to hang the birdcages on border trees, some even simply display their birdcages on the back seat of bicycle.

Keeping birds becomes a new emotional sustenance of the elderly in the new age.

Bird Market Forms

Thinking of this kind of emotion bond, I choose a courtyard in a remewal area beside Zhongnanhai. There used to be a city-known bird market but removed due to the renewal. I want to create an elderly community center which can undertake Bird Culture. Here comes the Beloved Inactive Residential District.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1

1. Attoh, Kafui A. "What kind of right is the right to the city?."Progress in human geography 35.5 (2011): 669-685.

2. Becker, Jasper. City of heavenly tranquility: Beijing in the history of China. Oxford University Press on Demand, 2008.

3. BORED, NOT. "Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space." (1999).

4. Frantzanas, Sotirios. “The right to the city as an anti-capitalist struggle” Ephemera – Theory & Politics in Organization (2014): Volume 14(4) 1073-1079

5. Gu, Huimin, and Chris Ryan. "Place attachment, identity and community impacts of tourism—the case of a Beijing hutong."Tourism management 29.4 (2008): 637647.

A Solution of Half Geometry

Inspired by the special emotion fragmentation and connection, I abstract the concept " half ", and ultilize it as the technique of form transformation. Various activities happen with bird keeping. Undertaking these activies and adding more types encouraging gathering, culture displaying and communicating events. The program generation is illustrated as follows.

Bird Market-Commerce

Bird Market On Weekends Gathering Square

Transformation of " Bird Events "

The chosen courtyard before reconstruction consists of two flat-roofed buildings and a sandwiched stripy yard.

Reconstruction Process

Reconstruct the chosen courtyard basing on the designated functions in the project. The three parts of courtyard are cut in half respectively three times, and he " Half Solution" applys well.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 2

6 Harvey, David. "The right to the city." The City Reader 6 (2008): 2340.

7. HE, Shen-jing, and Yu-ting LIU. "Mechanism and Consequences of China's Gentrification under Market Transition [J]." Scientia Geographica Sinica 4 (2010): 004.

8. Lynch, Kevin. The image of the city. Vol. 11. MIT press, 1960.

9. Marcuse, Peter. "Whose right (s) to what city?." Cities for people, not for profit: Critical urban theory and the right to the city 24 (2012).

10. Kaiman, Jonathan. "Razing history: the tragic story of a Beijing neighborhood’s destruction." The Atlantic 9 (2012).

11. Lefebvre, Henri. The production of space. Vol. 142. Blackwell: Oxford, 1991. 12. Lefebvre, Henri. "The right to the city." Writings on cities 63181 (1996).

13. Meyer, Michael. The last days of old Beijing: life in the vanishing backstreets of a city transformed. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2010.

14. Purcell, Mark. "Excavating Lefebvre: The right to the city and its urban politics of the inhabitant." GeoJournal 58.2-3 (2002): 99-108.

Half as Fabric Opening to Community

The beveled entrance presents an open gesture, welcoming the neighborhoods. The fence extracts the elements of birdcage, whose blanks can also serve as showcases.

The translucent sloping roof brings a rich light and shadow to the courtyard. Vines shade in summer, and sunlight shines in winter.

Cube4

Art Installation on Theme ' Wall '

SCUT Art Exhibition, Fall 2016

Collaborator: Yifan Deng

My work: Conceptual and Project Design, Cooperation on Models, All pictures in this portfolio

我跨越千万堵冰冷的水泥 Millions of cold cement I crossed 拨开伪装的繁丽藻饰 Disguise of garish orgaments I poked 我穿过虚拟信息世界 Virtual information world I traversed 却仍有

But still

仍有险恶人性拦我去路

Still sinister humanitied block my way 遮我双眼 Cover my eyes

而我触碰你心依然

But still I want to touch your soul

Living in such a crowded, fast-paced world, people are increasingly inclined to only focus on themselves and arm themselves with a series of boundaries. Boundary becomes enstangement.

I select 4 types of boundary, and symbolize their meanings to 4 elements. Correspongding to the exhibition theme ' Wall ' , I use transparent acrylic plate to represent walls that stop people touching the softness in heart of each other. They can not be seen, but they are always, unbreakable. Then the 4 boundaries are attached respectively on 4 layers of wall. I call it Cube4

The size of the entire artwork is 850mm* 835mm* 784mm. This artwork was made in 2017.11, and was displayed in School of Architecture, SCUT for 3 months.

Attaching 4 Elements on Acrylic Plate

The four layers from outside to the inside are Cement Layer, Orgament Layer, Electric Network Layer, Word Layer.

The Cement layer represents physical barriers in reality.

The Orgament Layer represents hypocriy between people.

The Electric Network means to point out the phonomenon that people nowadays rely much on the online world, which makes us less care for each other in real world.

The Word Layer is pasted on a lot of words that dipicting sinister humanity. Such as GREED, LIES, JEALOUSY, and so on.

These 4 layers have progressive relashionship in meaning.

In the picture above, I am painting quick-drying cement on the plate.The process must be accomplished quickly and accurately, otherwise the cement will be stereotyped in a not aesthetics state.

I make these elements attach to the acrylic plates in a way of growing upwards like cirrus does. A heart model is painted by gouache and put in the centural box. It is like our heart are passionate at first. But the barriers are gradually wraping over our heart. In the end, we all become alone.

1 Me painting the heart model

2 Tools

3 Layers spreaded on table

4 Colorized heart

Diapason

Rebuild Unbuilt Tête Défense

Never Built Paris Exhibition, Spring 2019

Individual Work

Exhibition Design, Model Making, Coorperation on Curation

Intro of the Exhibition

Since the 1930’s Paris had tried to activate La Défense, the business district on its western outskirts, where a jumble of mediocre high-rises later emerged, unrestricted in appearance or location.

In 1970, I.M. Pei proposed the Diapason, or “tuning fork” at Tête Défense, the gateway to the area, aligned with the city’s historic Grand Axis. The pair of sixtystory concrete office towers were intended to dominate the surrounding chaos. Pei, attempting to preserve the vista through the Grand Axis, sketched a perfectly symmetrical megastructure knit together by a radically inverted glass arch. Killed by the oil crisis of 1973, Pei’s unique concept has deeply influenced subsequent proposals for La Défense, where the tuning fork’s site has been replaced by another carved out structure: The Grande Arche.

TETE DEFENSE

To represent the project, I made the project model in modern style using grey mat board with brushed wet gesso to make the texture and acrylic sheet.

What needs to be more emphasized is the relationship between Diapason and its context - symmetry and domination. Therefore a bended perspective as the continuous view of the Grand Axis is put behind, with the surrounding high-rises that are "doinated" collaged.

To Life Journey

Art Installation on Theme ' Once in Lifetime '

SCUT Art Exhibition, Fall 2014

Collaborator: Huijie Lai, Huang Qiu

My work: Conceptual and Project Design, Cooperation on Models, All pictures in this portfolio

The Porject Under ' THE ' Light

Only when the two trains arrive at the designated spot can the light from top of trains cast the faces of the woman and the man.That is, can the two lovers 'meet' each other.

Life is made up of accidental moments. And a specific moment may change an entire life.

IThis is an interactive artwork.Numbers pasted on the board seemed to be placed randomly, but there hides secret in the shadow.There are two tiny spotlight on the top of two trains on the circle track. Visitors can operate the trains. If two trains arrive at the designated spot, visitors will find shadows of numbers are like a man and a woman. The two lovers can only meet each other then. Working Process

1 Instructing Poem on the Board

Organzing Shadow

"Not THE Right Time"

PORTFOLIO OF DIAN YU

M.S. Architeture and Urban Design

Columbia University

Selected Works 2013-2019