Yifei Yuan

1. Core I: Times Square Billboard Garden
2. Core II: W • A • L • L - More Highschool
3. Core III: Courtyard House
4. Advance IV: A City Run By The Youth
5. Advance V: New York Industrial Dairy Farm Tower
6. Advance VI: Olkaria Geothermal Steam Pipe Hacking Train
7. 2GB: University of Curiosity
   
8. 1GB: The Diptych kindergarden
   
9. The Room As ...
10. Vertical Transportation & Structure
11. Desert Oasis
12. /æ/
    

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University of Curiosity Course: 2GB STUDIO Year: SPRING 2019 Instructor: ANNA NEIMARK
This studio focuses on the relationships between architecture and the city with a close look at the dynamic and interdependent forces of economics, planning, ecology, politics, and infrastructure that have shaped the contemporary city. It is a design for a large university campus in Mexico City, a new urban prototype for a university - the Vertical University. An investigation of the campus typology by reordering a famous university plan - document and analyze organization as a figure-ground map - to turn the university into a vertical typology. It starts with the plan of Louis Kahn’s Indian Institute of Management. It rotates 90 degrees to form a vertical figure, which will be re-intervened into a sectional organization (Image 1). The major functional spaces are represented in black and the void spaces in white. The site line is outlined with a thin line. Gardens are represented in the dotted hatch and major circulation paths are in the grid hatch. The plan is separated into two parts:  the repeated pattern of smaller dormitories on the left; and the classrooms, offices, kitchen, dining hall, amphitheater, and library on the right. Then the plan is layered with the iconic square-shaped grid facade pattern (Image 2). Yellow is used to represent the open-air void space and grey for the closed programmatic mass. This diagrammatic figure plan with an overlapping facade is then transformed into a standing diagram - a physical representation of the drawing (Image 3). 


Six major constituent parts are identified based on their particular form and scale, ranging from XS, S, M to L and XL (Image 4). Each part belongs to an individual component of Louis Kahn’s campus plan. Classrooms are XS, offices are S, dormitories are M, kitchen and dining hall are L, amphitheater, and library are XL. The strategy is to simply extrude through figurative forms. One of the XL volumes, the library, is extruded and made into a physical artifact to see its volumetric characteristic (Image 5). The library artifact is presented on top of a pedestal as a still life. A NOLLI map is constructed for each part to represent its 3D figures by projecting oblique elevations from the plan view (Image 6). Some planar figures become mass and some become void (Image 7, 8). The corridor and void space between figures in the plan becomes a boundary for the field - it produces a cropping plane for the grids emanating from the figure (Image 9). It becomes a vertical circulation and shelf between individual parts. As seen from the physical mockup, the double-paneled “shelf” in which all parts are placed in-between them.

Taking the idea of a “shelf” emerging from the formal investigation, the 6 major constituent parts are rearranged to form a “cabinet of curiosity” configuration (Image 10). Considering the context as the mass of the city which contains a series of specialized figures, the task is to project the content of the city into architecture. By applying a reposition of the horizontal plane and its elements (figure, grid, solid/void ), the university is understood as a small city, a microcosm of the city in its programmatic form, but as applied to a vertical organization strategy - as Alberti said: “the city is like some large house, and the house is in turn like some small city.” The university is a microcosm of the city in its programmatic form. Therefore the highly repeated figures of the dormitories are removed, and the “cabinet of curiosity” is placed side by side with the projection of the L and XL parts (Image 11). The resulting vertical university has larger programs connected with 2 vertical circulations on the right side and smaller programs packed directly next to each other (Image 12, 13). On the ground level (Image 14), what used to be the circulation corridors in Louis Kahn’s plan is now the Poché area for vertical circulation (stair, elevator) and utility (washroom, mechanical room). The Poché area at upper levels can also be personal study rooms, small classrooms, offices, and change rooms for the swimming pool (Image 15 -18). The 5th floor plan (Image 15) shows the library, gallery, classrooms, study rooms, and rest lounge from top to bottom. The 14th-floor plan (Image 16) shows the admin office, auditorium, study area, male dormitory, theater, and female dormitory from top to bottom. The 20th-floor plan (Image 17) shows classrooms, computer labs, 2 auditoriums, a cafeteria, and a kitchen from top to bottom. The 29th floor plan (Image 18) shows a classroom, workshop, library, female dormitory, swimming pool, and male dormitory. The shelving racks provide open-air spaces and roof gardens (Image 19). The two vertical circulations transport people to each floor (Image 20). The vertical university stands in the city of Mexico like a piece of furniture standing in the living room of the city (Image 21, 22).

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