A revised garden pavilion typology centred around community engagement and a reciprocal relationship with the landscape, building upon traditional methods aiming to act as an exemplar to the Grays community. The scheme aims to create a new typology for community allotments, aiming to regenerate the landscape of Grays Beach through community stewardship. This revised typology utilises four seasonal pavilions set within a water network that responds to local topography. Whilst the landscape design acts to regenerate the shorefront, it can also be seen as a prototype that can be applied to multiple scales.
A lightweight external frame allows for easy assembly and modularity, with large corrugated roofs, aimed at maximising rainwater collection for the allotments. The internal units can then be coordinated to meet the needs of the local community. In this case, curating four separate spatial experiences, each favoured towards dining in a specific season, amongst the allotment landscape on which food is grown. The inhabitants' experience of the landscape encourages their care for the site and those who visit it, while the architecture fosters community.
Loose Ground
As discussed previously, the tidal nature and loose soil of the site does not lend itself well to traditional foundations. The finalised structural strategy utilises vibro stone columns to stabilise the soil and form a pile onto which the gabion walls can sit and form the base of the structure.
This strategy was key to the buildings feasibility and led to the decision to utilise a lightweight structure which would go on to heavily influence form and spatial consideration. Designing for disassembly was also a key consideration throughout, with the long term flooding issue on site, meaning the building is not likely to have a lifespan more than 80 years. Therefore, considering ease of disassembly and re purpose was a key driving point.
Allmannajuvet Zinc Mine
Peter
When researching into lightweight structures that sit within challenging landscapes, we resonated with Zumthors Zinc mine. The building is situated up a mountainside and its structure is therefore optimised to fit within the terrain, a lightweight frame and roof act as an external shell to house different volumes of function.
Prototype concept model.
Assembly detail of gabion wall foundations. 1:5 Structural assembly model
Assembly detail of roof beam, aimed at ease of disassembly.
Zumthor
Landscape Master Plan
Master Plan
The master plan aims to unite the main communities and users of the site, encouraging an interplay between the allotment user, a passer by and visitors. The experience for each is based on primary requirements, whether that be somewhere to sit and eat with a view or a place to store tools.
The key elements to the plan are its water system, allotments, and pavilions, each being knitted in a tapestry of gabion walls.
A key principle in the driving of the landscapes design was inspiration from British walled gardens, utilising walls to segregate space and provide shelter.
Creating a balance between the sites functions was a consistent driver for its design. Cultuurpark, is a gas plant renovated into a community recreation space, with an emphasis on its water system to divide the site and unite its various community functions.
Greenhouse situated within the landscape Development
Rainwater Irrigation
Irrigation System
A key element to the buildings operating cycle is to collect rainwater in order to provide irrigation to the allotment community. This system works by having reservoirs positioned next to each pavilion serving to store water which can then be released around the site.
The system not only acts as an irrigation canal but is also fundamental to guiding users around the site, seperating allotment users with visitors in certain areas and uniting them in others.
Design Process
1. Establish a gradual height change
2. Link the reservoirs between each Pavilion
3. Where do we want people to go
4. Irrigating allotments
5. Width and depth of channel
6. Controlling Flow
A key sketch in the development of the system.
Brion Cemetery Carlo Scarpa
A primary driver of the landscape design was the balance between the density of buildings, allotments and water. The aim was to therefore use the water as a means to break up the landscape whilst serving its function as irrigation.
Through our research into multiple landscape systems, we recalled Scarpas Brion Cemetery due to its balance between water, concrete and vegetation.
This render frames the key components of the water system, weaving its way between allotments,walkways and gabion walls. In this view, the system is being fed by the Autumn pavilions reservoir via a smaller channel that drops the water down between levels.
A View To the Landsacpe
Pavilion Typology Iterations
Proposed Typology
Final Outcome
The final model seeks to outline the project as an overview of its key principles. Through multiple scales the key points are framed, the core iterative principles, an overview of the landscape and the pavilion details.
Huamingjian Family Farm
Shipping Container Hotel Design
Project Year: 2020 -
Status: Under Construction
Category: Pair Work with Bin Tu
Location: Liubao, Rugao, Jiangsu, CN
This project involves the planning of a family farm and the architectural design of individual buildings. The client intends to build a shipping container hotel on this site. We have used Bernard Tschumi's Parc de la Villette as the main reference and carried out further development based on it. For the project in Paris, the site of Parc de la Villette was irregular and required the establishment of order. In contrast, for our site, it is extremely regular, and there are even crisscrossing and identical roads within the site. Therefore, we attempted to break this order and introduce new logic to blur this orthogonal pattern.
The first building we designed is a reception, which also functions as a bar. The entire design starts with geometric cutting, aiming to cut out eyecatching and continuous geometric shapes on different containers. And we connect three containers into an integrated whole.
Tête-à-Tête
Bartlett Y3 Design Project
Project Year: 2024 - 2025
Status: Completed
Category: Individual Work
Location: Camden, London, UK
This project is a design project I'm currently working on. During this academic year, chose the human body as an obsolete element to use as my medium for design. I believe that in the present era, many functions of the human body have been replaced by machines. To regain the human body's dominant position over machines, I decided to use the human body to substitute for machine functions. experimented with standing as a coat hanger in my friends' apartment and transforming into a dining table for meals. In order to achieve more interesting interactions, I eventually attempted to turn myself into a sushi-making and dining station.
This suit of armor is the prototype of this attempt. After putting on this armor, my abdomen provides a stainless-steel cutting board. Most of this armor is made of 3D printed aluminium wrapped by leather. At the lower end, it is connected to a rotatable wooden-slice dining table made by vacuum forming. There are grooves on both sides of my arms for placing food, seasonings, and tableware. On the ring finger of my right hand, there is a 3D printed spice bottle that can only sprinkle salt when I shake hands. After completing the production, invited two friends to have a meal on me.
In Death We Found New Life
I was fascinated by the aesthetics of the combination of machinery and biology, so wanted to create a sculpture that has complex mechanical mechanisms yet is also integrated with biological elements. hollowed out a beetle's interior and reinstalled a structure composed of numerous gears and mechanical parts, giving it a new life.
Final Outcome
Making Process
Tactile Balloon Wall
This project is part of the design project I'm currently working on this academic year. After experimenting with the human body usurping the functions of machines, I discovered that in my attempt to replace machines, instead became part of the machine. It was as if the human body and the machine had merged; one could even say that I was consumed by the machine.So, what if a machine had a structure similar to that of the human body? Could I be digested by it? What would feel in this space during the digestion process? And how could express such an architectural space?
Therefore, I explored the organs involved in the human digestion process and their internal spaces. I found that these spaces share a common feature: they are all very constricted. To replicate this experience, decided to conduct some experiments using soft and narrow passages.
However, the human body is not a stationary object. I needed to incorporate breathing, which means that the constricted experience is dynamic. Eventually, I decided to use an ESP32 development board to periodically inflate and deflate latex balloons to squeeze the human body, achieving the effects of breathing and squeezing.
I also invited some experimental participants to experience it. They all reported that they liked the device and had a strange sense of security and an experience similar to a massage. This experience is also somewhat similar to the feeling of human touch. In the next step, will cast my own customized balloons for inflation and deflation, further exploring this tactile experience of constriction, and attempting to draw inspiration from it for the spatial design of my architecture.
