Final Portfolio

BY LU LI

Final Portfolio

Initial Program

A research facility that focus on the study of American cities.

Basic requirement: 4 office, library, 2 exhibition space, lecture hall.

Important notes: ADA requirement, circulation, measurement.

Site Research

Physical siting: 955, Sansome Street.

Nature of the site: an existing parking structure, corner of Sansome and Vallejo, bottom of Telegraph Hill. Facing a flat street and next to a steep street.

Study Models

Important notes: exploring the possibility in structural concept, envelope expression. Very basic ideas can develop into complexes organized and meaningful ones.

Study process: simple structures, with openness that have more possibility to evolve and intergrade.

Study model points

Deformation of rectangular form

Skin and skeleton interaction

Lines creates surface

Elevation creates contrast

Concept inspiration

Design concept development

3 dimensional grid: a grid that is not limited to a flat surface, but rather elevated at different parts that creates a grid that have high and lows, flat and slopes.

Warehouse typology: rather than stick to the literal side of the warehouse type, warehouse is more expressed in abstract concept in the design. Contrast of block versus light weight lines, the feeling of industrialism and abandon, scale in height of the space.

The concept of a medium that connects two elements: financial district and tourist area; the hill and the landfill and the bay

Design through charcoal drawing

Charcoal drawing is a free tool to express

Pros: unrestrained expression, the point is not to articulate on the exactness of the drawing, drawings can be highly abstract tone drawings or more defined freehand line drawings, provide more possibilities and solutions in design.

Cons: misrepresentation of scale and proportion, difficult to translate into actual program from abstract concept.

Study of plan

Study of envelope

Study of elevation.

Site model study

Scale is big enough to explain the nature of the site and surroundings, small enough to make a good scale building model that can put more details in.

Benefit of building a site model: in a readable sense site model provide a material to really understand the site and its surrounding.

Final Product: model

Final Product: drawings

Three moments

Important notes

Uplifting the back part of the structure referring to the history of San Francisco city. This city has been through so many trauma, earth quakes and fires, that it’s literally broken, but somehow present a more strong and graceful image. I use fracture of the structure to express it.

Separating the office and library with a tall empty gap. Separating special experience with space to create a node and change in rhythm. Height of the space and interruption of the space refers to the sensibility of a warehouse, also the rectangular form.

The structure of the entire building is developed through a combination of grid and deformation of a cube. The narrow structure mimic the piers that is directly below, but the curvilinear breakout mimic the sensibility of the romantic feeling of the bay below and the hill above.

Final thoughts

This project is a combination of complex/flawed concepts and development of problem solving. I as the designer am sometime trapped by the concept part and fail to rationalize the reality of the building itself. Through this project, I learned to be less defined by the concept and less controlling, and more open to possibilities that can be randomly (or is it) discovered in design process. I’ve also learned that the importance of scale in design process, which is especially important to architecture design. Architecture design is not wishful thinking, it can not be self indulgent. What we have to offer as a designer has to have the quality and potential to become an actual building.