Work portfolio (Architecture Part 1) by Shuxiao Zheng

Content

Psychogeography/mapping Project

Small Intervention- Urban Kitchen Project

Free International University project- Conceptual design

Housing Project

Project 1 -Psychogeography

This project was to explore parts of the city which has been forgotten because of the convenience of the transportation. The term “Psychogeography” is to use physical handcraft map to record the emotional response in the city. Number 11 Bus goes all the way around the inner and outer circle of the Birmingham. Therefore, all students had to take the bus in order to see the city as a whole. For me, I am focusing the culture diversity, and I tired to map the emotion that I saw different races people from each stops. The diagram below also show my attempt to draw the social infrastructure of this multicultural society.

D6-1 General brief for the whole year

META-THEME: Mobility

TRADE + CIVIC OWNERSHIP

An increasingly privatised domain has challenged the traditional order of permanence, legibility and power

within the cityscape. The once great municipal structures now appear as misplaced objects in a field

dominated by infrastructure and speed, and subject to global rather than local forces. Are there

‘global/local’ exceptions to this? What are the implications for architecture in terms of its urban form,

materials and relationship to space and time, and who should lead and define the new paradigm?

MOBILITY: Infrastructures

Infrastructures employ systems that enable our trade, contemporary culture and our wellbeing. These

systems can utilise advanced technological solutions but can still provide a humanistic function,

something that is desirable as well as essential to make our environments livable and dynamic.

Many of these infrastructures are about prosperity, whether it be speculative or actual, and is the thing

that binds our institutions, landmarks, cultures, and civic identity. Mobility is significantly affected by the

economy and as a result - our urban environment - but they can dry up (and even reverse) in times of

underlying economic uncertainty. Infrastructures offer an alternative or an improvement to current

conditions but often require a leap of faith as it attempts to address our built fabric on a scale that does

not come naturally to us – urbanity.

Different epochs had particular views on what infrastructures should achieve and change;

the Renaissance – a humanistic, artistic and intellectual infrastructure; the Victorian Enlightenment –

society, class, wellbeing, cultural identity; Post-war – car-topia, efficiency, and ultimate commercialisation.

Infrastructures are abundant, complex, some grand, but most are latent – hidden amongst our everyday

environment. However, there is a surge in implementing new public infrastructures that are more visible

and offer a duality of utilitarianism with civility. A fundamental question remains on how civic programmes

can be integrated with technological and monumental infrastructures.

This module will ask students to look for the consequences and opportunities that lie in our current

political and social condition, whilst maintaining a foresight into what, and how, architecture can provide a

positive impact as a response.

Individual brief

D6-1 The Urban kitchen project

This project was to design a space which can provide a cooking and dinning within a small timber structure. The aim

of the project is to use food as theme in order to reinforce the spirit of communicates around Birmingham central area.

Site Anaylsis

Main Conceptual ideas Conceptual mass studies