mengdan liu

Lima, Peru/Harvard GSD/Option Studio/Jean Pierre Crousse /In Collaboration with Long Zuo

This project aims to revitalize the Maranga archeological complex area by re-imagining its current physical and social borders. Through the creation of an educational and cultural district, it seeks to add value and meaning to the historical concepts associated with the pre-Columbian heritage sites of Lima, through the establishment of a new urban dialogue between the city and the huacas where they can be acknowledged and reinterpreted as a holistic urban image.

Traditional Maranga complex contained impressive huge monuments, numerous pyramids, palaces, temples and administrative centers. Their vast scale and dominant layout used be very present in the urban imaginary of the citizens, due to the visual impact and connections among them in the city

Urban land around Maranga complex was left undeveloped before 1960s. However as a result of the cities’ rapid expansion in recent 30 years, as the last piece of land adjacent to downtown Lima, this urban void was quickly filled in by large institutes and incremental housings without sophisticated urban plan strategies and necessary consideration of huacas. Some Huacas in Maranga complex are right now even in danger of physically disappearing due to the pressure of the developments.

As a consequence, borders were built to protect Huacas from the illegal invention brought by rapid urban growth, however, this physical borders eliminate the dialogue between this heritage sites and the city. The borders render the huacas as almost invisible on the streetscape and cut down the social, economical and cultural linkage between them, the citizens and the urban environment citizens. 

The development mode of the urban components is in a centrepid and autonomous pattern, borders are left underdeveloped, which resulted in a lack of dialogue and an absence of interactions of activities, social participations and exchanges within the in-between space and the urban components it defined. Similarly, borders are taking shape in various forms throughout the whole city.

Acknowledging borders as an ubiquitous and important urban phenomenon, we approach the project by examining the element of the “border”, converting it into a permeable living space that accommodating student housings, educational programs, cultural facilities, creative industries which are lacking now in this district. By introducing the living borders with an integrated platform at various height and accesses, the intimate relationship of Maranga complex and the city is brought back.  

The living border acts as a planning tool for directing development in the city. At district scale the addition of living border would facilitate a revitalized neighborhood, thus leveraging on existing important existing heritage sites. Educational facilities and linear parks would allow new interactions, activities and social participation in the adjacent surroundings.

The linearality of the border intervention enables a vision of North-South urban spine that connects Maranga and the campuses to the coast, as well provides a replicable solution for the future development of the other urban nodes throughout the city.

Monterrey, Mexico/Harvard GSD/Option Studio/Felipe Correa with Carlos Garciavelez Alfaro

Similar to other public parks in the world, Alameda Park has have been a historic component of the urban fabric, deeply ingrained into the urban life and culture of the Alameda-Pursima community.  The proposed project integrates alameda park with a university campus, and transform it into an open-space system that consolidates a mix of academy, retail, wellness facilities and housing.  

As one potential city landmark, It seeks to become a more integrated, distinguishable, pedestrian-friendly city center that allows for various population groups to engage.

However, currently the contiguous residential and commercial neighborhood witnessed an abandonment as well as a lack of interconnection between the park and the city. The park’s ability to serve the city is limited, as well a free movement from various destinations within the city organism is significantly discouraged.

The campus consists of five repeated rectangular stripes that extended from the  Alameda. to incorporate The learning spaces that are programmed under those five greenery pathways that lift the pedestrian experience off the ground and into a different vantage point. These stripes touch and flirt with the ground on the park side, while preserving the park pedestrian flow into the campus, and on the north side the pathway rises into a 3-storey high building that allows new views for users.  The in between spaces captured by the campus stripes are programed as a system of interconnected public spaces and courtyards that gives preview to the recreational amenities which are punctured underground. Lastly, An art museum, a theatre, a stadium, a dining hall and a public library are framed on the underground level and are interwoven with the ground campus circulation through a series of corridors and plazas catalyzing the richness of the urban life above the ground and bringing it to the underground level through the infrastructure.

 Jerusalem, Israel/Harvard GSD/Option studio
/Alex Krieger & Ofa Manor/In Collaboration with Pu Zhang
 

Malha basin, a district with large institutes at the peri-urban periphery of the city of Jerusalem, seeks to become a more urban, pedestrian friendly city center.

The proposed project is grounded in what is present in the Malha neighborhood, aiming to acknowledge and activate the unconnected neighborhoods and the adjacent large institutes such as a stadium, an arena, a shopping mall and an office park. Existing mass transit and infrastructure connections bring the traffic flow from the other parts of the city into this area, however, the vehicle-oriented urban fabric does not addres the local needs of nearby amenities and day-to-day necessities.

This project proposes a radical missing of affordable housing, retail, community, center, wellness facilities and office park. Taking into account of the diversity of ethnicities, religions, ages and backgrounds of the people that a green aged in this district, this speculation seeks to re-organize the chaotic urban context in a way can fit the needs of the local residents.

(Re)Fabricating Tectonic Prototypes

Harvard GSD/Distincion Project/Prof. Leire Asensio Villoria/In Collaboration with Niccolo Dambrosio and Pasquale Totaro

New York, NY/2nd Place, King + King “Comprehensive Studio” Design Competition/In Collaboration with Yuxiang Luo

Located in the Hudson Yards Development between 35th and 36th streets, the site is one centerpiece dedicated to the Hudson Yard Redevelopment Project on the far west side, Manhattan. Port, highline, subway, railroad and tunnel meet here and leave the site a chaotic condition of unrelated network. The main challenge is
finding a contemporary method of constructing a urban icon, as well as preserving historical urban context.

Syracuse, NY / Syracuse University | Advanced Design Studio 408 | Professor: Jonathon Solomon | In Collaboration with Leandro Cortez & Mengru Li
The ultimate goal is to make use of the structure that holds up the I-81 and utilize it as medium to connect it to that of the program so as to formally demonstrate the possibility of incorporation that exists in this decaying structure. Furthermore, we need
to emphasize the importance the highway can have in the strengthening of this zone as a medical district.
What exactly are the characteristics of the setting where the highway find itself in?
First of all, the highway creates a infrastructural barrier that slices the medical district into two parts: the Downtown and University area. Secondly, the space underneath
the highway is highly vacant. and creates a feeling of isolation for the pedestrians and
people who live around. As a matter of fact, from government statics, an approximate of 30% of the spaces situated under highway are underutilized.
Lack of Interaction
The interaction between individual and medical geared facility is very specific to the needs of each individual and for that reason many of them do not have the opportunity engage with one another and create a more united community.

The goal is to then utilize the area underneath and above the I-81 (closing down traffic) to create a fitness/education program that can further evolve this medical geared sector of the city.
The hybridization of the structure
Having chosen a health fitness program in order to expand and fortify the health geared activity of this sector the project has come to the conclusion that the highway needs to play a huge part in the purpose of the program. The structure is the backbone of the highway and by literally connecting it with that of the health fitness a “fusion” in terms of material and structure can be achieved that
truly makes use of our decision to keep the highway and as a result emphasize its importance as a character within the existing setting.

This project was designed and constructed as a group by the students from SOA, Syracuse University.

The goal of the project was to create a small “play hut” for a local school that specialized in educating disabled children in an integrated environment.

The Mouse House was designed and then constructed from a technique driven process of design. Through
manipulating the standard ideas of formwork we decided on our final process of casting the concrete between
an rigid, designed, exterior and an undesigned, organic interior. With this technique we knew that we could
create an object that looked complete and formed, almost like a geode or a rock. We designed the exterior formwork and prefabricated it in our facilities; CNC Milled insulation foam with our desired pattern and inlayed it in the wood formwork we created in our wood shop.
The interior formwork was intentionally random. We stacked four hay bales in a pile seamed the gaps with mud from the site. These two contrasting methods would create the exact exterior we wanted coupled with the sheltered cavernous space inside we also desired. Varying standard sizes of PVC pipe were intersected in between the two formworks that after cast would leave a hole permeating the interior and exterior.

THE FUNCTION OF TIME: CULTURE COMPLEX

 London, England | Harvard GSD | Option studio | Professor: Farshid Mossavi & James Khamsi | FALL 2014 
This project aims to explore architectural potentials of time and uncertainty in large cultural complexes to generate interior urbanism. The Victoria and Albert Museum, Sadlers Wells Theater,
University of the Arts London, and a Contemporary Art Museum are housed in a single building. These institutions are presented to both share spaces as well as maintain independent parts within
the building.

Instead of the universal and autonomous space of the Pompidou Center that leaves change to chance, and where its stacked floors can vary only through subdivision, this project investigates how a large interior can be designed as an operational matrix that
can change in radically different ways over time by incorporating switch spatial elements such as moveable buildings parts, multi-static spatial grids, as well as strategically
planned free-spaces (atriums).

The exhibition intend to become a continuous tube(ramp) that not only houses galleries and museums inside, but as it internally circulated, it start to touch the floor slabs that surround it, and embrace a radical mix of program and users

One continuous ramp houses two branches starting from same threshold at ground floor, each branch leads one exhibition route, one gallery and the other museum. It diverges when it goes
up, meets and detach from each other until it ramps all the way up to the top. Major flow of people comes from the bridge that connected the aquatics center, upon their entering, they are
immediately engaged with the one touching moment of the tube and floor plates.

By embracing change as a core component of the complex, this project aims to use the dynamics of the complex to generate interior urbanism. The exhibition space intends to be a high performance instrument
rather than a storage for artifacts, that it links and expands people’s experience with art and with each other.

The exhibition intend to become a continuous tube(ramp) that not only houses galleries and museums inside, but as it internally circulated, it start to touch the floor slabs that surround it,
and embrace a radical mix of program and users.

Taking Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome as the structural prototype, this project is evaluated testing and presenting the structural performance of the geometry as one self-supported system. Scaled mock-ups and models are utilized to study the joinery, planar reciprocal frame elements, integrated systems as well as the manufacturing methods that are involved.

Fabrication of physical prototypes: One fifth of the form is taken to generate Fuller's icosahedron subdivision as the base unit,variations of the shear forces and bending moments are analyzed in the assembly and dis-assembly process of the prototypes.