Portfolio Architecture//2015 Feng Vivian Chen
PortfolioArchitecture//2015
Feng Vivian Chen
The F town is a 7 storey commercial office
building occupied with restaurants and bars,
located on a busy street within the popular
entertainment district in Sendai, Japan. The
building is distinct from its surroundings
from its white façade and the form which
represents stacked boxes. The façade is
done in collaboration with Asao Tokolo, a
Japanese graphic designer. The façade is
made up from 10 inch white square units
with patterns of either circles or crosses
which differentiates the exteriors of the
boxes. One of the main design aims was to
create a wide range of special organisation
opportunities within the chosen space.
Render of the FTown techtonic details between floors
FTown Building
Project One
Render of FTown exterior at day time
One of the main intention of Hitoshi when designing for the F Town is to make
it as spatially flexible as possible, to give freedom to the individual tenants for
their own interior layout of the restaurants which is to be determined later. One
way to do that was to break away from using an elevator to get to every single
floor by creating another spiralling circulation around the building using the
voids provided by the exterior boxes. This way the voids connects the spaces
within each floor, allowing the customers to hop from restaurants to bars.
Interior Render of FTown
Project One
“...provides a rich sense of
spatial variation despite
its limit of internal space
configuration”
Interior Render of FTown
Hitoshi also wanted to avoid
having kitchens and bathrooms
stacked up at a corner of the
building, so he provided 45 cm
spacing between each floor with
enough room for ventilation ducts
and plumbing pipes.
FTown Reimagined is a continuation of
Project One, where further design of the
existing building is carried out using the
software plugin “Grasshopper”. The project
is focused on parametric design, which is
a process based on algorithmic thinking
that enables the expression of parameters
and rules that, together, define, encode
and clarify the relationship between design
intent and design response.
My parametric design was focused on
the exterior facade of the building, since I
wanted to keep the geometric complexity
of the original FTown Building, but modifying
the facade of the building which was
originally cladded with white square panels.
FTown Reimagined
Interior Render of FTown Reimagined
Project Two
Interior Render of FTown Reimagined
Creating the base
hexagon shape
using points and
lines, then multiply
using a grid.
Setting the size
of the inside
hexagon shapes
to vary according
to images
using“image
sampling”.
Offset the
base hexagonal
shapes to create
thickness of the
hexagons.
Render of close up facade deatail
Grasshopper screen shot
Grasshopper screen shot
Grasshopper screen shot
The facade is to be made from mainly three
materials. The original clear glass is kept un-
changed, with the addition of frosted glass
replacing all of the original solid walls. Ceramic
hexagon panels are cladded on top of the fros-
ted glass.
Render of close up facade deatail
Techtonic Detail of Facade
Render of FTown Reimagined at night
time
“The frosted glass provides transparency to the
activities behind the facade of the building at night
time, but at day time the patterns on the facade
blossom, conceiling the functions behind it.”
Photo of facade close up
Photo of facade under studio light
Project Three
Rapid Prototyping
Photo of facade under natural lighting
In this Project parts of the facade of the “FTown Reimagined” is 3D printed. Due
to the thinness of the hexagon thickness, the facade needed a solid support at
the back, thus the hexagon opens are not hollowed.
Photo of form model
Photo of model within context
This is a studio based design project,
focusing on the “form to facade” design
approach. The client is looking for a office
building that blends well into the context in
the suburb of Fitzroy, Melbourne.
The form of the design is developed
through a series of movements such as
pushing and shifting to create a complex
formal quality. Although this complex
quality can sometimes only be seen behind
other buildings, to me this exactly reflects
the layered, complex built environment in
Fitzroy.
CITY WALLS
“The Form reflects the Fitzroy context”
Project Four
Photo of model within context
“The Form reflects the Fitzroy context”
Project Four
Elevation Gertrude St
Elevation Lt Gertrude St
Elevation George St
scale: 1:600
A A
Plan First Floor Scale 1:600
Project Four
Section A-AScale 1:200