A R C H I T E C T U R A LÂ
P R O J E C T S
Located in Hulme - Manchester, the brief asked for additional facility of the Health and Education Department of the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU).
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Through analysis of the Brook's building - the current MMU's Department of Health and Education, there is a shortage of clinical practice facility for the Health Science students. To overcome this issue, the new scheme proposes a new building for the Health Science programs with an intgrated practical clinic on site. The clinic is not only for the students' clinical practice but also serves the public, especially the Hulme neighbourhood with the majority of population are old and middle-age.
Ancoats - Manchester has a rich industrial history, a period known as a poverty-stricken district. However, Ancoats is now a friendly neighbourhood with a mix of residential and business areas. The site, located at the heart of the district, is very easy to access from all directions. Taking this advantage, the concept was to turn the form of the building into an attraction spot of the neighbourhood. This required the building to stand out from the rest of its neighbours, and the scheme tried to tackle this through the shape and massing. The idea was to come up with a form that could be seen from almost any spots of the road, and from the building its users could have the view to all directions of Ancoats. This leads to the concept of a twisting form, as the twisting motion changes its direction the view to and from it also dier.
Responding to the brief asking for a communal living space for a group of artists, the scheme proposed an apartment building dedicate for sculptors. The space also includes an exhibition venue placed in a separate glazed block to make the art pieces visible to the public hence becoming the attraction. To bring this idea further, greenery was chosen to be one of the main design driver that acts not only as the attracting element to bring people to the site but also as a connecting element of the three main programmes: residence, public and performaning space. The green spaces invite both the residents and visitors to interact with the performing space and the whole site.
Architecture is shaped by patterns of daily life. If we wish to understand the city, one of the places we may want to visit is its markets. Markets have frequently been a city’s life core. Countless cities have been grown (even created) around a market, and travellers from all over the world have depicted vividly those places of exchange, emphasizing the atmosphere, that contributed to each city’s urban realm. Markets represent the hybrid mixture of culture and people. Therefore, markets serve not only the place for exchange of goods, but also the communal space for people.
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Linked to markets activities, we will often find the production, consumption and celebration of local food. Food is not only a basic need, but a human cultural expression. Food is a part of the identity of a place, and revitalising food production is also integral to our response to the climate emergency. We need to reduce our carbon footprint, our food miles and our waste, and give people access to affordable and healthy food to increase resilience. Initiatives such as vertical farms and urban food growing are providing new ways of encouraging community involvement and access to green spaces in urban areas.
The popsition of this scheme is to bring greeneries into the urban context to connect people with nature.
A place to celebrate the making and perfomring water puppet - a precious part of Vietnamese traditional culture
A series of studies and analysis of the Mount Pleasant Rd. area in Toronto, Canada; including the drawings and representation of the site through the plans, typologies studies and proposal of typology designs.
The project was to design a pavilion which is to be placed in Bellevue Park, Toronto. The pavilion should be designed as spacious as to exhibit the "Pointing man" statue of Giacometti.
The concept I chose was to integrate the pavilion with the nature of the park. Glass wall was wisely chosen to emphasize the connection between the interior of the pavilion and exterior atmosphere. The form of the pavilion was based on a rule in nature - the golden ratio. The pavilion could be thought of as a simple step towards interpreting the idea of bio-mimicry architecture.