Global Symposium 1 | MSAAD Class of 2006

hi everyone um welcome to the global symposium organized by the msaad class of 2006. my name is leslie quo associate director of development and alumni relations and i'm pleased to introduce the program and even more excited to introduce this cohort of practitioners to the broader gsap community as they present work that details how they engage with issues of social environmental and cultural importance through design based in 11 different countries and working with an even greater number of communities we learn about local conditions that will inform the challenges and solutions unique to the communities in which they each work we're now starting the first of three presentations today johnny chu based in taiwan will be moderating johnny chu the founder of jc architecture and out scholarship recognized for his fresh perspective and concept-driven work he is the first time on news designer to win world architecture festival inside world interior of the year his other accolades include red dot best of the best design award the international architecture award new york interior design best of the year award and many more the firm is also being voted top 25 architectural firms in taiwan in their 10th year and selected for 40 under 40 awards by prospective global his provocative and unconventional design have made him a key figure in dev in defining design in taiwan and is often invited to jury panels of esteemed design competitions such as the us's international interior design award he also often guest lectures at many universities including this prestigious royal college of art in london his latest adventure includes a train design for taiwan railway which also just received the good design award from japan and is currently pursuing an architectural phd degree from rmit uh thank you johnny for being one of the core coordinators of this program today and i'll let you take it away thank you thanks for the kind introduction um i think it's a really unique opportunity that due to cover that we are able to meet the students and the alumni and also hopefully the professors and then to demonstrate what we've been doing after 15 years of the school exactly 15 years i know the commencement and the graduation is coming up soon so this is a little celebration and then give a sense of hope um and also hopefully we can provide job opportunities um to the graduation students we really want to show with the 21 22 speakers our different talents and advice the vast diversity expertise that we have through maybe development or government works or private sector works it's i think it just shows how gsap allow us and cater us with these all these professional expertise that we are able to carry on forward for the past 15 years and but this is also an opportunity for us to share each of our and understand what each of our own abilities are and then so hopefully we can work internationally and cross national boundaries um and then how will be able to help each other i think that was will be also a key uh thing inside this symposium and now we're just here to connect and reconnect and have a very good time so i'd like to welcome our first speaker abdullah he's the managing director of shape architecture practice all of us graduate from msad 06 and shape architecture is a base in uae and it's founded in 2006 so i think after straight after colombia and it's dedicated to set an example of excellence in design in the middle east so it's very interesting for me to see how metal is thinking and how shape lies and shape the forms i know you have a lot of production technologies in the design process so i'm looking forward to seeing that thank you and take it away abdullah then thank you johnny and elizabeth i'll just share my screen [Music] can you see my screen yes yes yes okay um thank you um john for an introduction um uh after graduating from uh from colombia i worked briefly in new york and then i decided to go back to the uae and open my own practice which is called ship architectural practice and research at shape we all sorts of projects from residential residential projects interior commercial cultural hospitality as well as transportation and urban design we also have been uh i have been selected as one of the 50 most influential people in architecture in the region for two years uh in a row uh some of our projects have been also highly commended and nominated for awards um or shortlisted for our words uh today i would like to i'll be speaking uh talking about uh or presenting uh two projects uh the first project is called there any room um it's a collaboration with the space continuum uh the rain room is um it's is a is a pavilion that is hosting a single art uh permanent uh art installation called the basically rain room comes the name by random international uh the the simple volumetric representation of the building is in contrast with the very busy commercial uh center in charge as well as the uh architecturally busy area [Music] so the idea was to have something that was simple straightforward and attracts the people as well by being by contrasting with the with the surrounding and with and play with the between the relationship between interior exterior by bringing elements of the the surrounding urban context into display as well as materiality into the building [Music] so as you walk through the the walkways or corridors that takes you from a very lit space to to a darker uh ramp that takes you down to that dark room which is which is where the insulation happens and there and then you end up into that dark room where the where basically where the installation is uh the ring basically it's um it's where you get to exp uh it's an immersive experience of rain where you walk through the rain with cameras and sensors you won't get wet if you walk in the right speed and basically that's how you experience rain and it also has contracts it has a little bit um more meaning new ideas since rain is a bit scarce um and so on uh in terms of plan the of course the main space of the installation space and everything around it is servicing servicing that space these are sections showing the different levels and organization of the space um we got second place for the best cultural project of the year um uh three years ago as well this project has been published uh regionally and as well as internationally in disney uh the second project um that i would like to talk about is the american diplomatic academy the emerald diplomatic academy basically is [Music] a university or a college that basically is teaching um is basically graduate where young diplomats graduate as well as existing diplomats take continuing education courses and so on into into the in that let's say college or academy uh uh and frequently it's been visiting visited by uh ambassadors ministers as well as sometimes even prominent state figures from around the world to give lectures within the its premises um the idea of the of the academy is uh around the central uh agora the gorilla from the um divided uh throughout we have internal external ones and also on different levels and so on um the building is basically wrapped with a with an aluminium aluminum skin that has been bent and perforated to reduce solar heat gain as well as reduce the glare or eliminate the layer from from the building at the same time provide enough ambient lighting to uh or enough lighting to eliminate the engineering spaces this is these are renderings of the building as well as a nice shot this project is currently under uh final stages of construction i will be showing some images of this project the project is um with this military has been taken into consideration while designing the project so uh it's it's rated to uae which is something equivalent to um lead silver in the us we're talking about the new silver rating of the previous or the old ratings um celebrating so talking more about the facade um so i talked about reducing the solar heat gain and glare and so on we developed multiple equations to optimize the use of the materials as well as give the building's unique character with the falls and vents within the aluminum sheets so we developed these equations and came off with four modules that that inhabits the the the facade without having any cut pieces or um or with or wasted materials or and so on also perforation had been studied to avoid the glare at the same time even of lighting for the for the spaces inside um inside the building uh these are more cups that we we did for the for the for the bent and perforated sheets uh you can see at the right image how that the profession would look from from the inside and i think the success of the selection of this material is that uh to meet our design intent is that depending on the how the angle you you view the facade and the direction of the sunlight at a certain time it becomes very either very opaque or very trans very um see-through i mean or very transparent depending on the the angle um the angle of view and that's i think the were successful achieving this this is another review from the let's see what they call the vip entrance where you have enough foliage to provide shade from the hot sun the uae uh this is the interior um atherian um again the gathering areas uh student gathering areas and so on happening throughout at multiple levels uh we introduced this staircase of the traps around the building encouraging a more healthier lifestyle and encouraging movement and so on within the building these are renders of the classrooms with smart um just screens as well as um uh walls uh the footage has been selected so that multiple arrangements within the classes can be done depending on the discussion class or a lecture and so on um these are the other spaces within the building this is the executive launch within the building and the border room uh now i'll go through some of the construction [Music] images that [Music] that we took recently from the project uh you can see from the different images that each um facade reader is differently depending on the again the view and the angle of the sun here we're doing some testing for the for the facade lighting and controlling the aiming intensity of the light this is a view of the atrium in the construction you can see all these cranes working all at the same time the the deadline was um was very near and every they have to work all at the same time this is the atrium during the day this is what i call the the wooden um the wooden uh drape the draped walls this behind this is the basically the multi-purpose wall that still has retractable seating that had not been installed yet the elevator lobbies some views from the upper level in the attribute the classroom almost done so some final touches needs to be done too so here from the executive office here you can see clearly the preparation how it reads from from volunteering from venezuela uh so that's basically uh what i have um what i would like to present today um the use of technology and so on visca didn't have enough time to really go into details into that but that's part of our work uh all our projects are done through uh bim and we use also scripting and programming to optimize the design and its processes and so on thank you for your time if you would like to see more of our work you can visit our website at sheep.e thank you very much for your time thank you abdullah impressive and huge yeah i was able to visit um dubai last before the culvert so that wouldn't get a chance for me would love to visit so many buildings so we'll leave all the q a to the back um if there are any questions welcome to put in the chat group and then we'll try and answer it so third speaker is uh carl so carol wadia is the senior associates at architect hafez contract contractor um he graduated from the academy of architecture in mumbai in 2003 and then of course uh columbia into 2006. he now has a team of approximately 70 associates what's popularly known as the cow group at hc and he has some distinguished projects such as the db osha tower in mumbai the icc towers in mumbai the uh manipul university in japan and um yeah we look forward to his work welcome carol thank you sorry carl to interrupt abdullah i think you might have to stop your sharing in case carl wants to share his screen as well so thank you johnny uh for the good introduction and uh abdullah wonderful work uh you know where you know where you are and what you're doing and uh you know just a word out to priyam a good friend at the the gsap and we're going to miss her today but i'm sure we can see her work some other time as well i just hope she gets well soon i'm going to pull up my presentation now is my screen visible johnny yes good okay okay wonderful so uh thank you everyone for logging in and uh spending some time uh to to you know to see what we've all been doing for the last 15 years today i'm going to talk about four projects uh project number one two three have been designed in lockdown and they're all design competitions all these four have been projects we've won through the design competition route and project number four is actually the first project or the second project that i was i had an opportunity to be a part of as soon as we graduated from from colombia and came back to india so pretty much the most recent work whereas number four captures the oldest work that we did about 10-15 years ago so the first uh the first thing is that all of these four projects are in different parts of the country and like it is in any large country uh you have different climatic conditions uh different geopolitical and uh you know demographics in different parts of the country so the the first project which is the indian institute of management is in the city of calcutta now known as kolkata it is the second most uh premier management institute in india and a pretty hard fought competition that we did last june in korea and we won it the second project is a very large urban redevelopment in the city of mumbai uh in what is known as e-block in bkc uh it's the financial hub of the city of mumbai or at least it's trying to be the third one is a design competition we won for the national maritime museum of india uh you know it's just recently we won it and we're still designing or let's say redesigning this building and the fourth project is the bits pilani institute in rajasthan which is a hot and dry desert region of india and also a project which is set in a historic campus so uh starting with the indian institute of management calcutta calcutta is a city which has an extremely high ground water table so you often come across sites which have 25 to 30 percent of the site filled with water and this water goes up and down by a couple of feet uh every year and most of calcutta and and you know the bay of bengal and bangladesh all of these areas are bay areas so every year some amount of land is lost to the sea and it's very hard to reclaim land over here so we got this we inherited this site which had an island in the center on which historically the institute 40 years ago had built their academic buildings and all around it was water and there was also this intrinsic canal system that connected different portions of the site but essentially uh what we got when you're looking at a master plan is a site which on which buildings had been placed uh with no real strong master plan intention and what that sort of ended up being is we got these two little corner portions uh the one building on the left where we had to add an academic building for almost 2000 students and on the top right of your screen there was a water pond in a funny squarish ship and we had to sort of redefine its shape and with whatever land was available we sort of had to string a building out of it and you know make the best of uh the the perimeter and the circumference that we created for ourselves uh so what we did is we we didn't we could not challenge the master plan let's put it that way because some of these these water bodies are as deep as 30 meters deep and fortunately they're fresh water so with with the space that was available to us in a functioning campus we had to design a building so what you see on the top left of your screen is the uh the adjacencies of all the buildings that existed on campus you had all these white blocks and that blue dotted line indicates uh the plot which is available for the new academy building so immediately what we did is we decided uh not to block the convocation port with its adjacency to the waterfront so we we didn't we did a building which was elevated off the ground by about 10 meters we kept the entire stilt open for circulation pedestrian movement all of that and we we did a building from third fourth fourth fifth and sixth floor onwards so the whole ground plane stays open and you have a building elevated above this sat quite beautifully on the lakefront and one of the challenges was given the availability of the site this was a dead east west facing building and when you design buildings in india you have to be very cognizant of which direction it faces uh if you have any conscience in trying to do a sustainable building so what we did is we kept all the classrooms on the inside or the or the teaching blocks on the inside and we kept all the circulation on the outside and because of budget constraints uh we could not air condition the circulation spaces so we we actually masked the facade in this gkd stainless steel mesh in terms of the elevation of the building and the structural system and why it looks the way it does is we designed this building uh during pandemic and uh we wanted to design a building which could be more or less prefabricated and brought to the site and so the material we chose was steel steel is not a very widely accepted material in india but in the east of the country especially calcutta there's a very good heritage of doing steel buildings so this is the image you see of the elevated building all of the structure is what it is there's no uh you know trying to hide the structure you get intense rain in this part of the country so you have to shield all your open spaces also in a way that all of the internal spaces don't get wet and the idea of connecting the internal convocation part through the new building out to the water promenade was achieved by doing this as you walk from the old courtyard through our building to the promenade you have this grand staircase that comes down and meets the ground plane and students can directly enter the building the heart of the building from this staircase also it works beautifully because i don't have that view today but you also get a screen where you know all sorts of things can be televised this is how the building looks at night uh it's it's it's this is the gkd screen mesh uh with all of the academic spaces recessed in the back so we get adequate shading beautiful lighting and the whole ground plane is is open the next building we have to design on this campus was the student residences and like i explained you can see on the bottom right of the screen uh there was a there was a squarish or an octagonal shaped pond uh so what we did is we just slightly change the shape of that pond and we essentially uh you know the way you wear a link on your finger we put a building around that and we use the perimeter to create an interesting build form now these kind of buildings get tricky because uh again you have to you know you have to make sure of how the acoustics works and how the whole internal space works and you have a building which faces all directions not south east west so there is different treatment of windows and facades for each face of this building but the the image on this top right of the screen will give you an idea of how students actually enter the building so they just enter on foot and they can move through the building and access any floor that they essentially live on so this is an aerial image of that building uh it's one building but it's divided in about five parts with pedestrian walkways and connections right up and down the building so imagine about a thousand five hundred students with about 200 families in the left hand side wing all living but all having different egress and ingress paths to make this building activated so this is a one-year program for mba in which you know getting people together is important as part of the the success of the program all of the inaccessible terraces were used for solar panels of course this is the internal space the grand space so you have undergrads undergraduates post graduates and the shared space in between all of them as well as the ground level pedestrian promenades that sort of weave in and out of all the spaces in between we did some other interesting additions to this campus the image on the top left sort of puts you in about a third floor uh somewhere in between the building so you know at every floor there are these these breakout spaces uh and then the image on the top right puts you in that middle balcony or the middle terrace that looks over both ends of the campus given that it rains for almost 250 years in calcutta we we design what is you know what we call the smart chata chata is the hindi word for umbrella so it's an inverted umbrella uh that was five meters in height 12 meters by 12 meters in plan uh that collected rain water we we plugged the solar panel on top of it uh it would it would also be the perfect mounting pole for all your wi-fi lighting camera security all of that for the campus and the most important function is that it connected every part of the campus with covered walkways so it became a sort of feature of the campus while also being highly functional that's what the bottom two images show next project i'm going to talk about is completely different it's an urban redesign or a redevelopment of an existing large it's a 20 hectare site in bandra kula complex in mumbai it sits on the methi river and it's connected by by two metro lines you can see the two different the red one and the blue one which are both under construction it's also connected by some very important uh highways and the meaty river this this portion of the meaty river is uh is known for its the undergrowth of trees that it has the mangroves and the mangroves in india in the environmental sustainability ethos of india mangroves are a protected plant species so it was very important to you know respect the mangroves but exactly opposite to our site uh just across the river there is a nature park called maharashtra nature park in which there are a lot of seasonal birds and all that come to this campus to this to this park so part of the design brief was to uh to create this world-class business destination and also create a connection over to the maharashtra nature park so what we did is uh we elevated the whole ground plane the elevated ground plane got connected to both the metro lines as you can see on the left we created this large art plaza and one of the things that the city of mumbai suffers from is what we like to call a boundary wall architecture every building is within a boundary wall fenced up like many uh countries in the east so we wanted to create this campus that had no boundaries and people could walk across all portions of the campus and the design for the bridge across the meaty river was done in such a way that we planted only two columns in the riverbed therefore taking care of the mangroves and we we did this reverse suspension cable design which automatically meant that the bridge in plan would become an s shaped bridge which means people going from one end of the business district to the maharashtra nature park would actually enjoy the journey that's hence the statement journey is as important is less important is as important as the destination so that was the whole ethos behind the connectivity uh given that this project would be developed over many many years by different private public partnerships we had we went about setting up architectural controls uh for the whole campus so all the buildings uh the bottom one thirds would be cut back to allow maximum light and cross ventilation across all of the pedestrian spaces this meant that we had to bring in the diagram system of architecture into the facade design of the building so this was all demonstrated and put as part of our design entry which helped us towards the end and also it meant a beautiful cross ventilation and clear line of sight at the uh at what we like to call the e-deck level at ground floor so these are just some images of what the whole master plan submission looks like eventually when these buildings do get developed keeping the diagram system and the ground floor intact the facades of the buildings could be this or it could be something else as this was a master planning exercise that i suppose we took too seriously let's put it that way so we even came up with the model building of how we could consume all the gfa space and how that would work at ground floor and these are some images of how it looks on as it abuts the street all of the pedestrian spaces in between the image this next image shows you a connection to the elevated city park station and the last image is from the maharashtra nature park you could get a direct pedestrian connection from the park or the pedestrian bridge and directly to the elevated metro station thereby kind of activating the site as well as activating the park the next project is the national maritime heritage museum in local gujarat so this is a museum that covers india's maritime history from almost 4000 bc where we had the indus valley civilization to the model to the modern uh you know to the modern navy so it's a museum that had to be designed uh at a location which was just a kilometer away from an old archaeological site which is which itself is about two and a half thousand bc so keeping in mind uh that archaeological history and what's unique about this site is that this used to be a port town uh for the indus valley civilization they used to trade with the uh you know with the mediterranean but as the as the sea receded for almost 2000 years this this site got land locked and could no longer function as a port town but the previous image on the top left you can see was the uh oldest and largest uh tidal dock that is created uh in in dc so keeping all this heritage in mind and also keeping the fact that this site gets flooded every year in monsoon we created this this museum which you see on the top right which was connected to this massive urban interchange and we used the flood waters that would enter the site every year we channeled it into this very interesting mix of canals and you could access all parts of the museum as well as the south southern end of the site which has hotels and eco resorts and all of that to help the museum flourish because this is a very uh you know far out space from the main city and uh you know keeping the maritime theme but also trying to respect uh the old harappan and indus valley architectural style so the entire museum is planned in ram rocks which is a material that we are still studying these are some of the images of the dock and the jetty ways and how you enter the museum these these are all the architectural inspirations uh to sort of take inspiration from the old stepwells in india gujarat which you see on the left as well as create these wonderful aquatic and maritime experiences of going below water above water etc and also trying to use a material which is uh you know appropriate in terms of history and excavation and you know finding your way around things so these are what the spaces look like uh there's a large imax dome these are some of the interiors of the galleries and uh the building is is being thoroughly studied in terms of cross ventilation and comfort and all of the uh you know the factors that make a good project and last but not least the fourth project is a site uh is a building we did in bits pilani rajasthan now to put it in perspective this is the hottest place in india it hits around 50 degrees centigrade in summer and it goes down to around -1 in winter so it's a it's a place of extremes and there is an existing old 75 to 80 year old campus that existed on this side it's probably number three or number four engineering campus in all of india so if you see on the bottom left of your screen that's the existing architectural style and if you see on uh you know in any of the other images all of the buildings around have their architectural style and fortunately unfortunately the only space available to create a building was smack in the center of all of this heritage so either it was going to be create another heritage looking building that sort of matched the architectural style or the approach that we went was with was to create a building that essentially had no architecture and also what's very important is there's a the second image from the top top row there's an old clock tower which is about 80 years old and exactly across it is a saraswati temple that's the goddess of prosperity so it had a very strong visual access so the design solution that we went in with which you see on the bottom right of the screen and now this was the model that we submitted as part of our entry was to actually submerge the entire building below the ground simply lift up the ground plane by about two feet and have an entire campus of students down below while retaining all of the existing architectural heritage and character of the campus intact obviously this design changed we had to reduce the cost and think more about natural light and ventilation uh but that's what the final campus looks like you can see the saraswati temple at the far end which is at road level that's the street level and you can see this entire campus which is submerged below ground but at the same time with a lot of light ventilation all of that that's an aerial photograph from the top of the clock tower looking down at the campus so all you see are these four staircase-like structures that come above ground and the whole campus is down below and this is an image at night of what the world campus looks like so i'm just gonna run a short two and a half minute video that will give you a good feeling of what this place looks like [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Music] yeah so that's it from me johnny and uh i'm gonna stop the screen share now sorry like everyone has these huge giant ideas sitting involving changing beautiful buildings no when i show my work it's going to be no god not even in comparison but beautiful works thank you very much uh i hope to see you one day in india and then we can hopefully we can exchange more absolutely i just want to thank everyone for taking the time and joining in and just want to end a small note in saying that i think everyone said that but you know all of the studios are doing well because of the collaborative nature and and that's so important in in this whole and that's something we learned at colombia so i just want to end on that one thank you beautiful may i just interject uh at the end of carl's uh presentation here that uh he works for hawi's contractor who is also a gsap alumnus actually from the aud program so that also partly explains the large scale of the projects and we had the pleasure of having javis speak to students about two years ago now um so this is really nice to get another look at the kind of work that's coming out of the studio so thank you for presenting pro thank you for the opportunity santosh are you ready hi johnny how are you good i hope you guys are well in india yeah it's getting uh it's a little bit chaotic but we're all taking up precautions uh like you mentioned earlier you know we share speedy recovery for priyanwa and i think the bigger cities are the most effective so hopefully in another week or two weeks it should subside down all right but yeah stay safe so santosh good friend in colombia he's now a partner in sham gum associates oh i'm pronouncing that correctly uh which is located in trichi in chennai correct and the firm has been operating since uh 1982 and uh it's been it's a has a large influence over uh entrenchy and tonight so we look forward to your work thank you yeah great thanks thanks johnny and jesep for all the efforts uh for doing it uh i know it would have taken a lot of coordination but thanks thanks for doing it just share my screen now oh good yeah yes yep hey lucasy best screen should i start yes please it's all good yeah yeah thanks so uh i thought i'd just start like a journey of what i did after the the gsap or which at 2006. so from 2006 to 2010 i was working in oppenheim at miami uh i always had this idea of coming back to india so i wanted to choose a place where you know still want to work in the u.s but to want to come back with some kind of learning whatever is done there so it chose miami because it's as close to india in terms of the climate the vegetation uh landscape because of the hurricane and the you know the concrete nature of the buildings the whole city i i could see i could relate to many things and whatever learnings that's been done i thought it could be brought back here that's one of the reasons it shows that i was lucky enough to get in there and i used to work on a varies of projects i was there for four years four and a half years uh different scale projects hospitality sector and residential uh certain interiors uh high rises mid-prices we had a good exposure of all these kind of different projects and many projects in the middle east as well so it kind of gave a lot of openings and ideas you know to realize interesting ideas to make it practical and make it you know all kind of still have a cutting edge but still be [Music] so based on that and after 2010 i came back to india and for today i thought uh i just shared two of the projects that's been done the last you know seven or ten years since i've come from 2010 i've come back and joined our firm like you know my father is an architect as well so we joined i joined this room and my wife and my another partner so we're like a small team of four architects who handle all the projects so the first project is a school that we have done in rajasthan rajput is in gujarat it's in the northern part of india it's a it's a very dry part of the country and closer to the desert sometimes the temperatures can go really very harsh up to the you know 45 degrees celsius so the first time it was this was a competition also which we won initially and then we went on to do it the first idea was to here in india we have all these schools back in traditional times where it's called gurukulam where teaching actually happened below a tree with a guru kind of teaching you and the idea was also learn from learn with nature and kind of you know learn from nature as well on outdoors so we thought if it would be nice if we can bring back this idea somehow of having a garden or an open space for a school for all classrooms so this was a seed of thought with which we started the idea and we started to see how that could be multiplied for a bigger classroom that happening in all classrooms so we started to have gardens for every classroom that have shared spaces so these are the spaces you know after construction like how it starts to look like uh every space the classroom kind of open to a green space either on one side or either on two sides uh we thought that would be the best way to kind of feel refreshed in a class uh rather than being uh enclosed and all these classes because of kindergarten and other levels it's kind of interconnected so all the garden and cochlears could be easily monitored from the other staff of the other persons as well so these are again little examples of how the gardens start to pan out uh this was the design idea with which we started because the site was quite big here and we didn't have that much of limitations in terms of science so we started to design what would be the ideal way a classroom can have we kind of designed a little cluster idea of a garden a smaller garden and try to multiply that into a cluster and then multiply it without losing the essence of the whole idea and then we have these little perforated brick walls surrounding each classroom so that kind of releases the heat also sometimes there are sand storms which kind of stops that and also the little jar kind of cools down the air that comes in and also security security is also a key part in schools in india so like basically you have so many students that you don't want them to be launching around and you don't know where they are especially kindergarten to you know great tennis they're very concerned about students being inside the campus and not roaming around so there's a little more detailed idea of how the perforations the jolly the classrooms will start to work that's the entire site plan as you can see this is the where the red is marked as the schools uh we designed at five phases and currently phase one is done and phase two will be probably doing it next year or something uh the client already has like an engineering campus a colleges and other infrastructure so this was the site that was dedicated for the school so we tried to work within that and have some shared facilities which would happen aground or swimming pools with the university uh in terms of form when we started we thought we'll have like a very simple form that kids could relate to and the idea was to you know vary in all the services and with the local manpower available there uh but kind of still have the ultimate building to look like a you know a block or the gender blocks and have that idea replicated till the end uh where all the kids could relate to the form that we are trying to do so that was the initial idea so that's how the building started to look so you could see the perforated walls it's called velar limestone we did some research for locally available materials and it was a very affordable store also it was very cheap so we kind of host that and that runs in the territory of the building and we kind of wanted to have a similar experience for the upper level as well because uh you know to have a clean space with you know from the windows and also this also works like a screen kind of cutting down any dust that comes from the other so we have like a green screen on the upper level and the bricks that happened on the lower level this was during execution there was a new method so we didn't know how to go about it so we had a lot of things back and forth at site and then kind of came up with a pattern with the local workers of how it could be done there's a lot of wind so we have to consider a lot of lateral pressure and gujarat is also an earthquake prone area so we have to consider that kind of planning also happens so these are the plants these are certain corridors which will be connected in other places so you know we try to plan all the phases so that all these services and you know connected services are integrated when all the pieces are done and it looks unified as one building rather than disintegrated or different parts of the building move on quickly that's how the building starts to look like the major buildings that romper is one structure the second floor is just for a seminar hall or other functions that happen at some point but yeah operational ones are regularly in the first level and these are the spaces that kids kind of wait where the buses or the other waitress come pick them up i'm not clear in the picture but we painted some interesting space shuttles you know like uh uh astronauts and other things are the pavers that kids are kind of related when they walk towards the school so these are deep overheads which kind of brings you know shade to the lower walls and here they actually envision to have swings and other kind of structures where students can do uh when they're waiting for a bus or between you know towards the end of the schools gujarat is very well known for stepped wells uh you know if you google in and you can find lot of stuff in wells that's there in the ancient past and we wanted to have some reference to it but we're doing a project there but not directly getting too much into it so this is like a space in the center which connects all the classroom and you can also go through the upper levels and it also acts like a small open air theater and it works like a little green lung for the entire campus you know you come there and you see grain in the middle of the desert and gives you like a nice opening space so they have all their morning little meetings and days like a little fancy this competition small graduations so this is like a nice place and we did some shadow studies to ensure that there is no sun except from 12 to 2 most of the other times it's in shape uh you know it's very important in india as much to bring in light but also shade because it's it's too hot and especially for kids it's not a nice thing this is some animation of the library where it has like its own garden to resting certain moments also we tried our best to so that's how the spaces start to look like i'll move on to the next school this school was done around 2018 sometimes like a uh so this is a csr school for an automobile compliment it was interesting because uh they have a budget invite so they kind of came to us and said within a year you have to find a site build a school and get it operational in a year so from site selection we had lot of things part of it and the timeline was very critical because in schools in india generally opens around in you know april uh so that's saying whenever you can start at any time but you have to hand it over in april so we had like a year to find the site do the thing and then again on the budget we were to give you a thumbnail you would get around 25 to 30 dollars you know and convert to indian rupees that's the budget that was given for the building so that's the site uh when we initially started we identified and that's the site uh unlike the earlier project this school the site was limited and with this you know we had this little volume uh that where the building could happen and all the other open spaces have to be given based on bylaws most of the schools have an event we saw that you know we didn't have like a covered space yeah you know most of the places where people have to work or have their lunch either they have to you know they're using the classroom or go outside in a tree in a shape uh we identified a rural place here so that uh you know it's beneficial since it's being a corporate social responsibility we want it to be actually done so uh and these kind of places dendi has doesn't have infrastructure in terms of multiple other activities that happens in school sometimes you know they have karate classes uh their chess board and all these generally are done in a haphazard way in between classrooms or in other spaces so we try to locate something like that which is shaded and then all these other activities which happens 24 bit you know sorry in the entire school to happen there and again these are different phases uh phase one is then phase two currently we are doing it it's getting over in a month so then we did some local analysis of micro climate and started breaking these volumes into real small volumes and then started bridging connections to satisfy fire norms and you know closure uh for every classroom to reach an exit and then this is even more breaking down the volume you know the major wind direction is northeast and southwest and again in west also so all these little things again this also is part of the town where the temperatures can go most of the places and somewhere it touches potty so we wanted to ensure to have shea and wind because that's the only way we can make the you know an environment comfortable here so we need indirect light but we need direct wind so we try to work with that idea and bring these volumes now the idea which idea is to stop all the ones because we thought that will kind of bring in a cross ventilation for all the spaces and all the hot air could be dissipated and we kind of worked with like a perforated roof this was the shaded room that i was talking earlier and uh this building also tried to work with not have any sharp edges so the entire building has like curved edges columns and we thought it's a little more friendly way of you know attending school for school for children and that's how the plants started to shape up this is just a phase one we did a little research of the neighboring uh village here so there is a lot of temples lot of little hamlets here so these this temple on the left is around like 4000 years old and they had these it was constructed in different period of time and so the architecture there kind of has these different layers where every dynasty or every and you could see a similar line of lady happening in other buildings residences which they've left it open uh it is mainly for structure like you have a heavy base and a lighter you know a substructure and then a roof is even more thinner and it was nice that they left all these layers exposed because it's quite interesting when you walk down that we have seen so we started to use this kind of a little laying idea into our buildings as well so that's how the building started to work this whole building was constructed in like eight months by which we have to resolve all the ideas so wherever in the west and other parts we had to give deep overhangs to consider uh for heat generated you can see in these surfaces and this is the western part so we don't have windows here windows open on the other side again here gardens wherever there are all the garden has their own little garden so all that kind of opens up again to cut in security ideas so the building starts to look like so this is the interior space there right now we have another phase 2 here which is equally or bigger than this space and both connects and it's it's much nicer now i can share it maybe in a month when the entire construction is done so this is the operated roof and talked about this completes in students between classes and other times it's like a nice you know kind of learning light and architecture in the class between classes so it's much interesting than like a regular so we thought that's one that we tried here for the roofing and the spaces inside these are your kindergarten classrooms like i mentioned all kinds of interconnected we try our best to less you know visually connect any chances for abuse and other all stops could be kind of monitored even if one is not there take care of minimum storage so the jolly is where we have all the windows we try to avoid metals and then kind of work with terracotta and have the same language this again reduces heat coming in and also ties in the language of the building which we work for the local mall which we developed so that's how the space inside looks like now and this is a stage again now which we use that for all multi copies have their lunch and all the activities that happen yeah that's it thank you i saw this project in our daily yeah oh yeah yeah it's pretty cool to help us because we were quite bad on on social media or publishing so it kind of helped us in that time because we didn't have anything to do we were sitting in the office so we thought might as well start putting some of our work in right it's beautiful has shows a lot of culture and heritage and i think that's that's really important uh especially in asia that we're trying to have our own voice um really great work okay so the next speaker is me myself i'm moderating myself hi my name is johnny and i'll do a screenshot soon think that's it oops i just bought a new mac so take some time to change a little bit oh no okay give me a second i'll jump back on very quick while we wait for johnny um i'd love to hear i mean your projects are so amazing um but so much of it um is a reflection of the local conditions and i'm just curious like how has your training um outside of your respective countries sort of helped inform or prepare you for for what is very regional yeah i i listen thanks thanks for that question no actually the idea that we learned there was more on the whole idea to have an interesting idea and getting realized it without diluting over a period of because of necessary budget costing estimate so because the firm where it worked also was very uh attributed to a sustainable solutions towards climate and the intent was always to realize it and not get lost in the process that kind of really helped us and you know to stick to your ideas till the end uh whatever happens so we took that as a base and then kind of tried to do it the same over here with the same so i thought that we were quite climate sensitive over there also so we're kind of extending the same when we're doing a project here or anywhere else thank you it's i mean the campus is absolutely gorgeous i didn't realize johnny was going to be back so quickly by carl or abdullah if you had anything to add to that um and then we can move on to uh johnny i just want to say that uh you know the one thing that at least i personally learned at the gsap is that you know half the things that you think that you should not be thinking about i think graduate school and good professors teach you that you know you can think about anything and keep testing it out till you yourself are convinced that it's a bad idea and then you pick and choose between the good ones and the bad ones so it was that that moment of i don't know at which point you reach that moment uh maybe it takes sometimes it can take a decade till you reach that moment of understanding not to feel scared to test out any idea at least personally that's what i learned from columbia abdullah did you have something to add uh no no no sorry actually i was away for a few moments i didn't oh i was just remarking how how amazing your projects were but they were so reliant on the local conditions for their success and how learning abroad has been able to prepare you to work locally and so far we've heard personal conviction and uh you know being able to test out and be experimental in your design i i i think um the the biscuit technology the knowledge we um basically the knowledge we got from uh gsab and also we also worked on projects that are outside uh the us and so on even through uh um education i think that that would give us basic tools to um to navigate uh projects in different contexts or different locations and so on and try to understand [Music] sometimes some very quickly because you have a competition with a tight deadline you need to understand what's really happening in a very short time to be able to design design and have something that's actually relevant to a place we're designing to so i think it's um i think that's one aspect of it that that's more i think becoming normal but more international everyone is like even i'm in the uae and when i'm competing in local competition for even sometimes small projects uh there are people who abroad also competing so uh um so that's there everything is playing more global international and we need to be able to think quickly to really tackle different issues right the cultural competency that maybe um being in a very diverse classroom has helped um but yeah i mean i want to move on to johnny's presentation but that just brings to mind that our incoming classes actually represents 50 different countries this year so we're really excited um about the global perspective in the classroom and having this symposium represent the alumni community so well um so thank you and uh johnny okay let's hope this works let me try let me know if it doesn't i guess it's sharing so good looks great it's good okay perfect all right time myself i'm gonna moderate i gotta keep on time okay great um really super super happy to be with everyone i think the 15 years i'm also very surprised of all my colleagues and teams what they have been doing um yeah so i'll head into the presentation straight away it's been 15 years since our graduation i started all in new york columbia university and what a 15 year it has been um i was sticking up some old photos of uh sesame 15 years back this was a beautiful collaboration discussion and throwing ideas around with everyone and most importantly the parties the parties um i think i remember it happened on the uh friday night right and then also the parties at home so yeah don't forget that um these are most memorable moments i always thought i always thought i would stay in the u.s um or go to england or back to japan back to the australia but it was not until an illness that really captured me that removed me from all the physical abilities and literally just allowed me not to go anywhere and just stay in the hospital bed so unfortunately life doesn't go as planned after two years in new york i had to go back to taiwan for some treatments and was during the the treatments um i got known by my ex-employee that ex-employer that he was doing a competition and he wanted me to join him i don't know what better way to spend a hospital bed than to draw some 3d models and do some drawings so there we go um so i started to do sketches 3ds and presentations and submitted the competition and then 2 months later we won the competition and now it's the um sits in new taipei city it's for taipei university library it was a really cool thing for me because somehow it led me to believe that taiwan government and the taiwan environment has this ability to to to innovate itself and um and be better than it was it was it was so so before and so i really had this confidence that i should come back to taiwan and build my company which is jc architecture and then i invited my girlfriend and now wife to join the company so we are about 10 11 years in and uh with about 25 staff in the beginning it was really hard struggles because i was trying to bring in all these experience and learnings and cultural things from the west and so there was a very big clash of communication ideas between all my clients everything about here is about time and constraint and budget after a few years we understand rather than using a western mentality let's do something that the taiwanese clients can understand let's talk about language of time and budget and how can we design faster and cheaper okay so there are a couple of breakthroughs um i don't have any huge projects like my previous colleagues uh but i want to show like how fun and the kind of interesting projects that we are testing and prototyping in taiwan so let's play this was one of the first projects that allow us to speak to an international audience i mean at that time when we it was in uh 2012 at that time when we got into arc daily was like yeah we made it but it was quite fun uh it's a very tiny project from 45 square meters it was for cupcake store and so we thought about no cupcakes can we use the idea of folding to create the shop itself so basically we show the client that okay let's fold it show the client let's fold this shop like this and so on the left is the actual cupcake box and on the right is how we did the model so the two languages after completion shares the same demonator that when you walk into the store you can feel the idea of the brand that we want to encapsulate inside the shop [Music] so everything was was done very quickly day one day 10 day 27 finished voila and the class was pretty happy i mean there was a lot of ideas about how to save budget and time on this project for example if i use this thin board and we fold it up we create a nice job but what's more interesting is we allow for everything to be white that means picking the material is easy we didn't have to do a short front and discuss what the shop front elevation was plain piece of glass that extruded to the the street facade and voila becomes a little icon and symbol on the streets um we then thought wow this idea of thin is becoming very interesting everything in taiwan has some kind of that history of being fast and cheaper and so like though these advertising boards or these canopies is plastic and we got really um it relates to that's this question about you know how do we use heritage and how do we what do we think about journey or volume huh volume volume am i speaking to too soft yeah it's good now better it's good okay so yeah we wanted to test these ideas of the thing so for example this paper church um yeah why not we tried and test that and so the idea of manufacturing and testing came into our head and so with this next project called happier cafe with only four thousand dollars so ten dollars per square meter we got the we got the idea of if we you can if we can use the idea of paper to build the space that we can express ourselves as well it also happens to be in the library so we bought these giant huge rows of paper and then we started test is it possible to use paper uh is it possible to use paper and to build a space will the paper rip itself or the paper you know um as much so we we love these ideas of testing and we started to play around with it we started to draw shapes in terms of uh the different functionality to spaces and then we test it out in real time yeah so this is a final result of the happier cafe space and then people were starting to write and dance and express themselves inside we were then also invited to tokyo with this this project and this time we were having a even bigger sites were able to work with very big brands like b b italia so this very cheap idea a very fast idea working with the best furniture makers in the world it's really a crazy and astonishing to me so the the practice jc architecture is really a lot of ideas of testing the possible productions and material ideas and technologies that we can source locally in taiwan and then try to push the boundaries in terms of design and spatial ideas the next project is again a tiny one it's the fine art museum in taipei this building was built in the 70s it's a really really tiny shop but because the the building itself is built in the 70s and the architect used the idea of metabolism so we also wanted to see is it possible to extend the shop beyond this tiny little room is it possible that we use the metabolism ideas and push forward the living machine idea so that the shop expands into the giant lobby area again we do it all prototyping and testing uh inside factories that are only 20 20 minutes away so it's kind of the idea that you know we uh it's like the garage idea in the silicon valley we test a lot of things inside a little factory and then um yeah we try for example this is a sitting test idea we wanted the the shelf to go 4.6 meter into the space so we needed to test is it possible to have this length but without any deflection as you can see the testing works with very small deflection we spent about two weeks to fit out the shops and it's now becoming one of the tourist attractions it's it's very simple concept 4.6 meter shelf able to rotate it inside the space there was a very exciting moment when i had to jump onto the shelf in front of all the media and the press and we had models walking up and down just to test the structural integrity of this shop next [Music] this is so the last project i want to quickly share is uh it's the most fun project exciting project for me uh last year 2019 uh two years ago the the taiwanese railway trend designed a train like this crazy it's blue seating and little colorful flower petals and blue ground and like crazy lighting and like almost like a hospital right so um we were all very sad and we wanted to propose an idea of a redesign of the train we call it the moving building that we literally wanted to encapsulate all the taiwanese landscape beauty into the train maybe by removing all the barriers from the inside to the outside so as the train moves there's a lot of connection between what we see outside and what we actually feel and smell it and eat again so that was it we proposed the idea and uh we won the the bidding and um yeah this is the the locomotive design it was a design process about seven months two months design five five months [Music] construction and the beauty of it is not using a new train it's using a 70 year old train that try to also encapsulate a lot of the culture and the heritage of the old train itself and making this train the tourist train around taiwan it was finally revealed to the public in december 31st [Music] [Music] 2020 so i don't know my boy's dream was to go designing transportation so this was a really crazy dream project for me and now i have more bigger appetites designing a yachts designing a plane or even a rocket and my first yacht design was also just revealed about a month ago yeah so a lot of opportunities in taiwan and we won't really want to capture everything but allow me just 30 seconds more i want to share um a program that we've been doing it's called out scholarship it's it's kind of on after the kidney fund that the colombia gave it to us for us to travel and learn new experience so when i came back to taiwan uh 13 years ago i also wanted to do something similar so uh we provide also each students three thousand three hundred dollars for taiwanese students to travel around the world and also for foreign students to come to taiwan so there's a different exchange on culture on uh knowledge and on work experience so if you have students or if you are students yourself welcome to participate in this award and um and let's exchange interact thank you it took a little bit longer than that amazing stuff johnny okay so i mean we're the we're the lucky group we are a little bit i mean we only have five um but i guess we we we can spend a little time if there's no questions we can spend a little time to talk about uh cultural aspects talk about yeah like leslie was asking what colombia has taught us um i'm really grateful that because a lot of our sorry johnny go ahead yeah a lot of our audience is current students and incoming students um as well as alumni and of course our alumni are already in practice but i think there's a lot of curiosity um because our student population is so global um how that translates to working both in new york as an international um graduate but also bringing that sort of way of thinking um back to their countries of origin so that's where that that question came from but i also wanted to mention that johnny is the new president of the caa taiwan so any questions about transitioning to the alumni community he's also available um for that so we don't have any questions right now but johnny maybe you have one for for the cohort here well i thought i mean it's 9 p.m here so i thought maybe we can start with a happy hour i don't know if everyone has a drink on the hand maybe do something that's for friday's john really beautiful whiskey in taiwan called cavallon tastes like chocolate no it's it's really great because uh colombia allow us to [Music] to have friends over the world and i think that's the the most beautiful part so whenever we go whenever we want to collaborate and share ideas um i think that's what colombia taught us not to be afraid and also push forward i also i always tell my students columbia gave us 30 years of education to see the future so we used up 15 years we have 15 more years and then we have to go back to school yeah but um yeah so i think um my biggest hurdle coming back from colombia was to actually use that language with my clients um like i said in the presentation i had a lot of struggles but eventually i find the methodology and the procedures uh that were taught in colombia was very useful for me that if i don't if i if i sorry if i use that methodology to rethink my thinking process but insert the local ideas and culture and heritage and memories that allows me to speak to my client in local way but also allows my work to speak into an international audience in a way that it's not only western and western it's really taiwanese and western and i think that's what's beautiful about me coming back here i don't know about your experience um would you like to share some ideas guys so i think johnny you said the right thing that you know at the start you try and implement you know what you've learned and what you think is the right idea but very quickly you sort of come back to you know level earth and you realize that you you need to implement your ideas while communicating it in a certain way so that's also one of the things that colombia did teach us that the crits were quite tough and you know you had to get your ideas communicated in a way that the person that you expect to receive your idea understands it so there's the idea and then there's the communication and then how do you bring the two together so that uh coming from you know starting starting life in in this part of the world and then learning in another part of the world and coming back thinking you know everything and then realizing that you actually don't then you sort of put it all together and and try and forge a you know some kind of understanding of it is a slow journey that can only be gathered through experience like uh this school was great in the sense that it doesn't direct you in one particular mode of architecture or one particular idea it kind of lets you do whatever you want in any medium at that point it could be a and all kind of architectures are kind of given equal importance and exposure to every one so that it's always like mind breaking and opened up all the ideas you know coming from india we were little enclosed or traditional some certain ways of thinking and i thought that kind of opened up gave us limitless opportunities to any design and i would create a lot of that kind of thinking process really you know started after the columbia and the next thing was uh like if you mentioned to communicate those ideas get it in front of an audience and get your idea communicated which i thought i was kind of lacking back then and trying to learn that process like you mentioned but uh i i really thought that this school really helped us to open up and uh doesn't limit our thinking and kind of then get it done you know with the whole idea of making it happen uh really i thought that was very very critical at that point and i'm still getting benefited from that of that exposure and that happening great after all you wanna add anything yeah for um for me it's actually it's a bit a little bit different from um uh in the sense that you know the population of the uee is about 10 million only 1 million is actually a local population so during our education even in the uae uh basically all the all the faculty were non-email teams um so the the so the studios in the uae and even in new york in terms of the way of communication and ideas and so on that it has been taught by someone who is not not living in uae i have not lived for any area for a long time so um in terms of communication language with a continuation of the same trend but what i know what was uh for me the challenge uh for me was okay i'm i'm nimati i went and studied uh abroad one of the top universities in the world and then i come back okay so [Music] how do you show that or how do you um how do how do they accept that because when for example when i go to a client you know a client to present it with whether it's public or private client the first thing that you ask me who who is in your team who else is in your team what nationalities are working with you okay i'm at least at some point in the office i was the most qualified person in the office but they don't see that and okay you you know you could you could work with this person and see what you get so they started working with that with that now i know that it's you know it's your input that's important so that's that's not easy to get through but you know uh uh so that that's the one of the ridiculous things another thing also there's also our populations you know local populations limited as having a market to actually doing actually have their own office running their own practice and actually designing it can be counted on them you know in two hands it's not it's not that much of a number a lot of them go into public public sector and or um in the private sector they do have their own businesses but they're not as involved so that i think that was coming from abroad and showing that we have one questions from planet uh where do you feel there's more creative freedom as designers in public architectural more developers and which clients are more receptive to your thoughts do you want to take it away what do you say johnny uh there's a question from brunettes i think what's your answer oh what's my answer well i think i mean do you think there is uh i mean because this is a recorded session so i can only answer in the very political voice no i mean we all has a balance i mean we do public works to really you know help the society and we do private works and we look for private clients that look that uh that understand who we are and so it's very important for us to choose the right clients who are listening to our voice of course there are pro money making projects they're also pr projects but we try to stand ground and not just say yes to everything we try to do what we like to do and after 10 years 11 years we now have our own voice and then so the right clients seek us and then now so now it's much more easier down the line that we know they like our work and then so we help them uh with the designs okay so finish looks foreign to get little bit more of what you want the earlier part was really tough uh i think carl would be easier because they have a huge project and they have a lot of experience on handling them but when we do slightly a bigger project and then if you want to try something new uh unless you haven't done something on a similar scale it gets really tough and to convince people back but slowly now since we started building and getting things done uh i think the client is listening a little bit more than you know our designs are getting realized a little bit more than how it was earlier i think they will answer that question only ways to start building the way we want and slowly we'll start getting people to let us do what we want i i guess that's the that's the way that we are at is finding it happening for us right the personality of the person i'm dealing with whether it's private or public we have some public clients who basically want the project to finish quickly so they're not gonna pick on everything as long as the overall vision is fine and then things go really quickly actually after that some of them actually will thicken every single square meter you have in the design making sure you're not wasting public money on some extra that we actually can avoid and i think as johnny said once you start building a name then they start to they're just more of the new ideas uh um the clients start with the ideas more i mean also the biggest difference with the client who comes because i think you're the believe the right firm for them or designer for them and there's a client who just listen here that you're a good firm and come to you i think there's a very big difference between those two um in terms of accepting your ideas and building them great i think what i'd like to say as an answer to that question is that projects that come through you know your door to repeat clients and stuff like that there's always going to be some amount of limited freedom so at least in in my personal experience and at our firm what we try and do is you know once in a year at least do two competitions because that's the only way you can express yourself fully and whether you win or lose doesn't matter because you're doing it for yourself if if the if if you know the client picks you as the winning entry then you kind of got what you wanted in the first place so it's very important to do competitions uh not just for your own satisfaction but also to at least we feel so to keep the studio nice and tight and sort of activated and not get lazy because you know that's one thing we learned at colombia that you know you've got to continuously compete and better yourself and that's the only thing that you you know that's the way to get the best out of this one very beautiful yeah it got us um do more competitions as well i gotta stop making money okay it's great um i think i think asia is the the next frontier um we are very lucky in asia to continue to have projects and discussions and in collaboration so i'm sure all of us are very acceptive to students wanting to come to asia and work with us and well we welcome you guys the next session is in 12 12 p.m your time new york time and uh we look forward to seeing you there thanks again to all the speakers was really great to see you guys santosh carl and abdullah i hope we can do this soon again thank you guys thank you leslie thanks leslie thanks for putting this together thank you so much see you at noon bye everyone

Channel: Columbia GSAPP

Views: 107

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: C5etXtkusto

Length: 97min 17sec (5837 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 28 2021