The project began with a peculiar interest with heavy timber construction as an alternative construction method for a more sustainable future. Heavy timber as a building material comes with various advantages: timber is the only truly renewable resource, it is strong against fire, and its speed of construction is much faster than its alternatives. And the project embraces the limitation of heavy timber structure; it remains honest to the orthogonal layouts, and instead it uses facade as its prime opportunity to explore outside of rigid system.
The program of architecture includes various amenities that young professionals have grown to expect from contemporary offices, such as coffee shop, cafeteria and gym, but also the shared spaces that different offices can use to host bigger events when they need to. The facade is not only functional as louvers, but it’s the element that brings vitality to work environment and encourages interaction between different offices.
The site is located on Broadway Street in Downtown Los Angeles. Broadway LA used to be the center of the city’s entertainment like Broadway NYC, but the remnants of its former glory is only evident from the dozen empty theaters today. The goal of this project is to restore life to the street by bringing the people and programs back.
The key to restoration is to bring the young, creative professionals to the scene. I propose skinny building that encompasses commercial spaces, classrooms, and dormitory for the students. The architecture hosts a theater school that allow students to experiment their latest ideas and price skills. The interior of architecture is transparent, and the inhabitants are exposed to the outsiders that are equally welcomes to come and observe. Even the living quarters are transparent, which reinforces the idea that life itself is theatrical, and everyone’s lives are increasingly become like reality TV show. The architecture challenges the idea of privacy in contemporary society (and lack of thereof), where people willingly give up on their own privacy, and one’s life is another’s entertainment.
CALA is Center for Architecture & Urbanism Los Angeles. It is a museum that promotes education and dialogue between professionals, civic leaders and the public by hosting exhibits and events in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.
The project proposes a new idea beyond “free plan” and “free elevation.” Instead it strives to be “free infrastructure.” The architecture provides a continuous space for multiple programs, allowing maximum adoptability through its unique partitioning strategy. The “curtain walls” are ephemeral borsht in aesthetics and physicality; they are flexible yet still very specific in its configuration to avoid the trap of becoming spaces that are “too neutral”where nothing happens.
Fabric as material allows the facade to be animated with the help of natural ventilation and human interaction. The facade softens the boundary by creating a gentle obstacle rather than a hard wall. It challenges the concept of inside and outside, and what is public and private. The new museum objects the idea of exclusive bunkers for art pieces, but rather offers a civic space for dialogue.
Phone booths are an urban object that needs to be reinvented in the age of mobile phones or face inevitable demise. As a group of four, my team found an opportunity to reimagine phone booth as a temporarily private space for the urbanites within a public space.
We chose brick as our material to execute our concept, because we were curious to investigate how we could reinterpret the old material as well. Traditionally, each brick is made of six sides, but in a singular material. We took advantage of its geometry by introducing multiple materials to each side so ti can be configured for different functions. We also replaced traditional mortar with Velcro to advance the idea of “mobility” and introduce flexibility to the material. The bricks can be infinitely reconfigured for different needs and functions.
Drawing is an essential tool for architects to represent their ideas, but it could also be a tool for discovery for ideas and concepts. While analyzing a vernacular-designed object I found in Los Angeles, I developed a drawing technique that only uses points and vertical lines to describe three dimensional surfaces. I investigated how density and thickness of lines can delineate depth in perception. And the product of this investigation led to an unexpected visual quality: ephemerality.
La Ronda and neighborhood
