2020 - Competition Entry // Finalist

The word ‘alley’ in English can be roughly translated to ‘Hutong’ (胡同) in Chinese – a traditional Chinese narrow street. The Hutong has historically played a significant role in the daily lives of people living in Northern China as the place where merchants, artisans and the local community gathered and crossed paths with neighbors. Oftentimes they linked together ‘Siheyuan’ (四合院), traditional Chinese courtyard residences or temples. Thus, the idea of creating a “Silicon Alley” in Nanjing could take the form of a technology community with a Chinese character defined by an intimate urbanism and linked passages to courtyards. The vast Nanjing Tobacco Factory will be transformed into a city within the city of Nanjing defined by an internal urbanistic logic that also links back to the neighborhood.

The existing site is an accumulation of various buildings that have been clustered together to form a monolithic structure over time. Being designed on multiple structural grids, it is possible to detach the structures and form passages between them. The design for the new Silicon Alley has four alleys (or Hutongs) cut into the building converging at a central courtyard (or Siheyuan). The alleys are configured in a pinwheel pattern as a means to link together the surrounding urbanism with the internal urbanism of the campus. The legs of the pinwheel extend in all directions to connect the ancillary buildings and public streets with the campus.

Work in Progress

In collaboration with Wong Logan Architects (MWDL) and Greg P. Luth Associates Structural Engineers (GPLA)

Located in the Design District of San Francisco, the Maclac Warehouse was most recently used as a paint factory. Nearly a century after being built, It will be renovated and revitalized into a commercial space.

The first task was to structurally upgrade the building to comply with current California seismic regulations. Steel channels wedge the existing wood top chords of the old trusses to create new queen post trusses. The new trusses also double as structural support for a new mezzanine. The mezzanine floats over the ground floor column-free, suspended from above.

Work in Progress

In collaboration with Wong Logan Architects

Maclac Building B is a new construction project that will act as the cornerstone to the historic Maclac building complex in the Design District of San Francisco. The existing masonry and concrete Maclac buildings will be renovated and repurposed into PDR and office space. This collection of four buildings will be linked internally to create a single complex of 100,000 sqf.

Construction in 2020

This renovation of an office tower in Midtown Atlanta includes infilling part of the existing atrium and suspending conference rooms into the space. The other prominent feature in the atrium is a 3-story high living wall that counterbalances the stark architectural surfaces of glass and marble. The conference rooms will be sheathed in extra-large glass panels and lit like jewel boxes with illuminated fabric ceilings.

2018 - Competition Entry

The new Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas will serve as an anchor for the local community and a place of sanctuary for the vulnerable.  The facility is designed to exude a warmth and tranquility that welcomes refugee families who recently arrived in the United States.  The architecture is built primarily with rammed earth, a local and sustainable material that is reminiscent of adobe – mudbrick – that was used by the indigenous peoples of the region and for many of the original Catholic missions. It is a robust and beautiful material that may lend a sense of familiarity and comfort to the refugee families as they transition to this country.

2019 - 1st Place Competition Winning Proposal

2023 - Construction Completed

Competition Design: Odeto.A and PLAD

Architect of Record: Odeto.A

The Future Convergence Building (FCB) is a new interdisciplinary engineering building on the University of Seoul campus, providing much needed laboratory space and cutting-edge research facilities. Situated between the University Headquarters building and another engineering building, this new facility will eventually connect these adjacent buildings with a seamless pedestrian experience.

The main site planning concern was how to negotiate the different entry levels on the site, while still having a clear axial path to the building’s main entrance at the lower level. A terraced green is used to bring users up to the L1 level. This higher level is used by pedestrians to cross between the University Headquarters and the Engineering I building. The lower path that leads to the main FCB entry terminates at the structure’s grand atrium, which brings light and natural ventilation into the interior of the building.

The facade is composed of thin vertical anodized aluminum pipes. The pipes are staggered at each floor of the building, creating a deeper louver as it ascends to the top, culminating in a 5-pipe composite louver at the 5th floor.

Reno, Nevada

Based on the classic 9-square grid motif, this house inverts the idea of a traditional courtyard. Side yards penetrate deep into the grid, bringing the naturalistic terrain right up to the central living area. The landscape mounds in the side yards, take on the quality of a framed landscape picture rather than a horizontal patch of grass.

2018 - Competition Entry

In Collaboration with Odeto.A - www.odeto-a.com

The Seoul Education Hub is envisioned as a place of congregation, a place where ideas will incubate, and a place of leisure, arts and abundant educational opportunities.

The ground plane of the building – the most public and accessible – is envisioned as a porous sponge, allowing visitors, employees and the community to enter the site from three sides. The three entrances come together at a central atrium - a large, open and naturally daylit space. This atrium will serve as a flex space that will be used as an exhibition hall, a performance space, a public forum and more.

The building has a horizontal architectural expression. At the upper levels, the office is composed of half-vault precast concrete bands. These concrete bands are a minimalist interpretation of the overhang canopies found on traditional Korean Hanok houses.

Fall 2020 Completion

In Collaboration with Wong Logan Architects (www.wonglogan.com)

Photography: Billy Hustace © 2020

The new ferry landing at Seaplane Lagoon will be a vital addition to the public transportation network in the San Francisco Bay Area. The landing will provide a new ferry service between San Francisco and the city of Alameda.

The structure is a tensile fabric membrane stretched over steel members. It provides shelter for the waiting passengers with the canopy extending over 70’ in length.

Critic: Tom Wiscombe

Fall 2013

The new Broad Museum in Los Angeles is an evolution of the box-in-a-box concept; it is a monster-in-a-box. A figural gallery space, the monster, is inserted into a generic box space. The monster has crisp edges which give shape to a continuous involuted surface. This monster stretches and deforms the outer skin on one end of the building, while the other side retains its orthogonal edges. Both areas of looseness and taughtness define this outer skin.

This skin also takes on the graphic character of the monster within. Sectional lines interpolated from the inner figure are projected on the outside. As the graphic lines approach the regularized box end, they dissipate accordingly in relation to the geometry.

Critic: Zaha Hadid w/ Patrik Schumacher + Simon Kim

Spring 2013

When harvesting surface articulation from the material explorations, two approaches were used to develop an architectural language. At first I tried to extract ideas from them such as scale change, rippling, striations, smoothness-to-wrinkling and pocketing. Color was also considered as a secondary system that could enhance the reading of the patterns. This initial approach led to field studies showing its deployment with generic building modules.

The second approach was to use the computer to try to simulate what was happening in the physical world. Employing Maya’s nDynamics physics engine, I explored how platonic solids and spheres would react to negative pressure when both line and point constrains were applied. This process yielded an array of objects from which I could extract instances of intensity for further application in building form.

Winter 2020 Construction

PTP 1 is a mid-rise office building in Midtown Atlanta originally built in the late 90s. The lobby was characterized by an overworked pallet of various granites, woods and painted walls. Pilasters and overly fussy details detracted from what was otherwise a space with a strong character defined by platonic volumes. The space is laid out in two cylindrical double-height entry foyers that span three levels and two frontages, all bridged by an elevator lobby. The primary materials for the new lobby are plaster and white marble, both light materials with some texture, which render the spaces more luminous but still strikingly tactile. The accent materials are wood and brass, which lend some warmth to the lobby. In the more compressed spaces of the elevator banks, wood slats span the ceilings in contrast and visual relief.

The renovation of Peachtree Pointe 1 Lobby is an exercise in simplification - reducing the material pallet, removing excess geometries such as the decorative pilasters, and incorporating refined yet subtle materials. By incorporating these strategies, the impressive cylindrical atriums come alive in their full volumetric grandeur.