Category: ARCH 793B : Directed Design Research (Thesis)

According to the understanding of Louis Kahn’s Phillips Exeter Library, good architecture should be designed from an intuitive feeling including the architect’s experience and esthetics. Then, after doing the unmeasurable things, architects should think of making architecture in a more programmatic and workable way, which we can consider as a measurable process that makes those unmeasurable conceptual ideas into a measurable and controllable project. Finally, after a practical and reasonable process, architects should go back to the unmeasurable things which means how to make the architecture more spiritual and unique and make it exist beyond the time dimension.

The scale-up-and-down re-projection from distance to space, an invisible urban form, but retaining the original space sequence, opposing grids to emphasize the limitations of the architecture system. That is why new buildings are closely linked to the surroundings, but extremely strange. To criticize the existential value of an art museum by means of a hyperreality mask, whether it is a proposition of art commodities or a dual identity of art itself, or a background and landmark of urban architectural sceneries. The invisible structure placed on the site is the idea of a future urban space.
The street acts as a grid through the city scaling adult row width; Window-like pixel particles enlarged into building mass facades; The weird city curve is repeatedly emphasized after being mirrored. This unfamiliar and familiar feeling is an intertwined mix of imaginary fantasy and realism. Analogies to human bodies are limited, such as height differences are not significant. However, perceptual and perceptual mental activity deficiencies transcend their own scales and vary greatly. This thought-scale change at the level of consciousness separates architecture from reality and reinterprets a hyperreality. Disneyland through the continuous view of the spectacle, Pompidou through the non-architectural structure replacement, this program through the city scale of the redirection to find a reality.
Architectural constraints are in their situation just as human beings are. In contrast, architecture and human beings are free in their perceptual imagination. An invisible structure is precisely a bridge between architecture and human beings beyond their physical existence. It is critical that this transcendence of physical properties requires a heterogeneous social spectacle based on a physical reality rather than a non-architectural inhuman alienation. And based on a reality of transcendence, this is the meaning of letting the building bond to its situation. It is a remodeling of the hyperreality of a secret city to criticize the modern life in the context of the original city, which is a re-territorialization emphasizing and dramatizing the existing situation. This approach is urban camouflage

The performance of change and accessibility is the artistic expression of a building. It should be designed as a merged space so that people can move freely from indoor to outdoor, and the programs of the building should have certain resilience in the new trends.
Community Center, as a comprehensive amenity in the city, offers the place for people to get connection in-person, and establish the bond to the neighborhood. Therefore, the integration of each program will be an ideal performance of “Communicate”, especially in the high population density area.
The project is located in downtown LA, serves workforce/white collar during the weekday, while during the weekend and holiday, the place will turn into the communal space for party, club events and exercise.

If our responsibility as architects is to activate our built spaces for the rejuvenation of our users, we must rethink the way we design juvenile justice facilities. Through architecture, the aim of this project is to challenge the juvenile justice system by proposing an environment that heals and regenerates the lives of those facing incarceration. Through architectural intervention, the center integrates both youth and public in the same building and brings nature into the user’s experience. The residents find uplift and restoration in their environment, equipped to enter back into everyday society.