Portfolio

PORTFOLIO

ARCHITECTURAL FICCIONES

WENXUAN

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

B.Arch 2024

“You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand.

The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

01 THE PROJECTION

Constructing Narratives of Coexistence

Theater and Media Center

02 CHECKER HOUSE

Dwelling by Unlearning Co-living Housing in NYC

03 THE EXTENDER Matters of Site Drone and Agricultural Center

04 LEISUIRE AS PUBLIC STAGE

Emergent Public Everson Plaza Rennovation

05 BRAIN RECORDER

Perception through lines Personal painting

06 PARADISE LOST

Reimaging Landscape through drawing Photo Essay

07 THE ROUNDABOUT Cities of Stories Mapping Syracuse

Architecture tells.

THE PROJECTION

Constructing Narratives of Coexistence

Theater and Media Center

Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy

Spring 2022, 3rd year

ARC 407 Florence Program

Individual Instructor: Daniele Profeta

We inhabit a world characterized by fragments and projections, where information converges from various times, spaces, identities, and perspectives. Even our thoughts are interwoven with fragmented projections. In this era of New Media, the greatest challenge lies not in generating new thoughts or ideas but in avoiding getting lost in the labyrinth of projections.

This challenge extends beyond the narrative of Fascism; it also raise the question on how we position ourselves amidst such intricate projections in our era. On this site, a platform is emerging, devoid of a fixed point of view, yet filled with myriad perspectives. Only by comprehending things as a whole can we discover a suitable position.

Considering the project as a projection involves not only Ponte Tura itself as a product of historical projection but also viewing it as a literal projector that preserves and displays media.

Ultimately, it serves as a space where new projections come to life.

From this point onward, we formally step into the Projection of history. Before delving underground, what we still see is the surface soil. Unlike the continuous fields in Tuscany, the soil beneath Ponte Tura seems as if it has been pried open. Cracks and upheavals imply that something is deeply concealed here. The winding path ahead seems to tempt you into a trap of "staying on the surface." Only by abandoning the conspicuous, exposed to the light, can one possibly enter history. So, we began our exploration through the descending entrances on the sides.

The gradual descent and the circumferential path around the stage create a ritual space beneath the soil of Ponte Tura. The process of touring the space makes the action of visiting space becomes a metaphor for excavating history. Simultaneously, the form of "circumambulation," a ritual seen in many religious processes, alludes to the surreal and untouchable characteristics of history and the stage's infiniteness that cannot be grasped or understood.

Through the isolation of the land, the underground media center forms an unreal space as the first layer of the stage; the literal stage at the center of the theater becomes a stage within the bigger stage. It is only at specific points, through skylights, that one realizes how far the "real world" is from us.

In the end, Ponte Tura and the stage, both as stages of real history and as stages for the future's reenactment of history, resonate with each other across the audience from "above ground."

CHECKER HOUSE

Dewelling by Unlearning

Affordable housing

East Harlem, New York City, United State Spring 2023, 4th year

ARC 409 Intergrated Building Design Studio

Wenxuan Qiao, Kanali Sandrine Bamba

Instructor: Marcos Parga

Even though the checker board remains a constant pattern of black and white squares, the position of each checker pieces is never the same with every move. On the same black or white square, different chess pieces, different situations, different individuals, and different ideas all comes one after another. The board remains the same, while the pieces change all the time.

INCLUSION, FREEDOM, and EQUALITY – those are the checker board stands for.

Checker House, a six-level residential building situated in Harlem, New York City, is designed to cater to people of color and singles. The architectural concept draws inspiration from the checkerboard pattern, embodying the idea of weaving distinct urban features into a cohesive fabric. The implantation of checkerboard design aims to provide not only a visually appealing structure but also a harmonious living space that reflects the diverse and vibrant character of Harlem.

THE EXTENDER

Antananarivo, Madagascar

Spring 2021, Second year

ARC 208 Landscape Studio

Wenxuan Qiao, Tianhao Huang, Xiluva Mbungela

Instructor: Ryan B Thomas

The Extender is an agricultural drone hub located in the northwest outskirts of Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. It serves as both a hub for agricultural drone operations and an educational center, aiming to provide higher agricultural efficiency by drone rental services and opportunities for community engagement in the surrounding areas.

The term "Extender" carries a dual meaning. Firstly, as a physical entity, the building's form is generated from the courtyard as the central point, extending outward to construct various functional components. The openness and volumetric distinctions of these components differentiate and determine the functions and distribution of different extension modules.

Secondly, as a symbolic landmark, the building exhibits an outward-extending influence on its surroundings. The "drone" as a derivative functional component of the building expands the impact of the architecture through field operations. Additionally, by hosting agricultural activities, including public speech and markets, the building gathers the surrounding community, further expanding the activated regional scope. Matters of Site

This site map radiates outward from the project as its center. The four concentric circles from the innermost to the outermost represent the densely populated community with the highest impact, the surrounding community with the furthest radiation reach, the roundtrip flight range for high-end consumer drones, and the flight range for agricultural drones. Additionally, the map illustrates the land conditions in the vicinity. The slopes near the site primarily feature small-scale family terraces and accommodate the residences of many farmers. Beyond the slopes, there are extensive connected farmlands.

The extension of wall components does not divide the space into two; instead, through the manipulation of openness and visibility, the space exhibits a fluid and interconnected quality in plan. According to the accessibility to field and crowd, the reception and drone storage is on the left, the classrooms and outside amphitheater is down below the courtyard, and office is on the right side.

SECOND

On the second floor is the community reading room and conference room. The left wall directly offers an outlook corridor from the building to the field. The extension here is not only in terms of architectural space but, through various openings, creates diverse conditons in extension of views.

The reproduction of extension in architectural drawing reflects a kind of unreality and has the feature of metaphysical painting. When we reversely understand the structural elements of the building through perspective drawings, the semantics on architectural space starts to extend again.

LEISURE AS PUBLIC STAGE

Emergent Public Everson Plaza Rennovation

Syracuse, New York State, United State Spring 2023, 4th year

ARC 408 Visiting Critic

Wenxuan Qiao, Jose Morales, Parker VanderVen

Instructor: Lexi Tsien

Leisure as Public Stage is a renovation project on the Plaza of Everson Museum of Art, activating Syracuse community by bringing various public program and activities, including open air cinema, seasonal market and sculpture garden.

It frames a new scheme on public space that can adapt different using scenario with the change of seasons and time. Different scale of grids enables kit of parts could be spread out through different systems, creating a dynamic and rich use of space.

This conceptual drawing is the result of the combination of the three considerations mentioned earlier. When the three independent systems overlap, a new grammar emerges on the grid system. As a result, there is a rich spatial prototype generated by the interweaving of elements. The distribution of elements across the entire square transitions from the dense pavilion and bleacher in the upper left to the more lightweighted sculpture park in the lower right, and from the relatively permanent structures on the left to the kit of parts changing with seasons on the right.

THE BRAIN RECORDER

Perception through lines

Personal Works

Digital

2021 - 2023

Lines serve as my personal journal . The body movement of drawing is a crucial means for me to recreate my experiences and express the perception of surrounding events and environments. These lines are a part of my memory, and memory is also a component of these lines. It's like a pathway, connecting my internal world with the world of phenomena. These lines, for me, encapsulate experiences at the Presidio of San Francisco, the California Academy of Sciences, badminton club activities, and public lectures.

IPad as drawing tool allows me to draw while rotating. The paintings located at the four corners of the grid are the result of the rotation of the same picture. This placement simulates the visual process brought about by the tool.

After studying printmaking, I attempted to combine artworks using layers from multiple independent systems. The superposition of systems generats complexity. Unpredictability largely creates unexpected forms and lines. The form play in elements and layers could also be retro back to former project, 01 The Projection's overlapping plans and 04 Leisure as Public Stage's grid system.

In the rows of 1, 2, 5, and 6, each subsequent image is juxtaposed and independent. However, in the images of 3 and 4 rows, the series images shows a decreasing number of layers

PARADISE LOST

On the road to Redemption

essay

Individual

The imposed anthropomorphic contemplation is a spectacular act of observation. The reprocessing of associations with the context allows the images of animals being disciplined in human society to be understood and interconnected in a transcendent form within the composite pictures. In the context of motion prototypes and zoos, animals, as characters, spontaneously convey the spiritual unease, anxiety, and nostalgia for a lost homeland that humans universally face. The locations and times of these photos are discontinuous initially, for example, in "The Departure," the bear, at that moment, was repetitively performing stereotyped behaviors as it moved back and forth near the glass, and the photo sequence makes the bear disappear coherently within the narrative. In "The Nostalgia," the photos were taken in three different cities.

What forms the semantics is not only the structure created by the animal images but also the discussion related to the parent topic of "caged animals." It seems that under human domestication, the consciousness and needs of animals arise in our "observation behavior." The religious tenet of "equality of souls" appears to be meaningless in the absence of loss of voice. Animals are fixed in objectivity.

THE ROUNDABOUT

Cities of Stories

Mapping Syracuse

Fall 2023, 5th year

Individual

Professional Elective

Instructor: Christina Zhang

“What is a map?”

“What is the story the map told?”

Maps are the way to find where we are, through space, through time, through our eye, through our imagination.