PortfolioArchitecture//2015

Feng Vivian Chen

The F town is a 7 storey commercial office

building occupied with restaurants and bars,

located on a busy street within the popular

entertainment district in Sendai, Japan. The

building is distinct from its surroundings

from its white façade and the form which

represents stacked boxes. The façade is

done in collaboration with Asao Tokolo, a

Japanese graphic designer. The façade is

made up from 10 inch white square units

with patterns of either circles or crosses

which differentiates the exteriors of the

boxes. One of the main design aims was to

create a wide range of special organisation

opportunities within the chosen space.

Render of the FTown techtonic details between floors

FTown Building

Project One

Render of FTown exterior at day time

One of the main intention of Hitoshi when designing for the F Town is to make

it as spatially flexible as possible, to give freedom to the individual tenants for

their own interior layout of the restaurants which is to be determined later. One

way to do that was to break away from using an elevator to get to every single

floor by creating another spiralling circulation around the building using the

voids provided by the exterior boxes. This way the voids connects the spaces

within each floor, allowing the customers to hop from restaurants to bars.

Interior Render of FTown

Project One

“...provides a rich sense of

spatial variation despite

its limit of internal space

configuration”

Interior Render of FTown

Hitoshi also wanted to avoid

having kitchens and bathrooms

stacked up at a corner of the

building, so he provided 45 cm

spacing between each floor with

enough room for ventilation ducts

and plumbing pipes.

FTown Reimagined is a continuation of

Project One, where further design of the

existing building is carried out using the

software plugin “Grasshopper”. The project

is focused on parametric design, which is

a process based on algorithmic thinking

that enables the expression of parameters

and rules that, together, define, encode

and clarify the relationship between design

intent and design response.

My parametric design was focused on

the exterior facade of the building, since I

wanted to keep the geometric complexity

of the original FTown Building, but modifying

the facade of the building which was

originally cladded with white square panels.

FTown Reimagined

Interior Render of FTown Reimagined

Project Two

Interior Render of FTown Reimagined

Creating the base

hexagon shape

using points and

lines, then multiply

using a grid.

Setting the size

of the inside

hexagon shapes

to vary according

to images

using“image

sampling”.

Offset the

base hexagonal

shapes to create

thickness of the

hexagons.

Render of close up facade deatail

Grasshopper screen shot

Grasshopper screen shot

Grasshopper screen shot

The facade is to be made from mainly three

materials. The original clear glass is kept un-

changed, with the addition of frosted glass

replacing all of the original solid walls. Ceramic

hexagon panels are cladded on top of the fros-

ted glass.

Render of close up facade deatail

Techtonic Detail of Facade

Render of FTown Reimagined at night

time

“The frosted glass provides transparency to the

activities behind the facade of the building at night

time, but at day time the patterns on the facade

blossom, conceiling the functions behind it.”

Photo of facade close up

Photo of facade under studio light

Project Three

Rapid Prototyping

Photo of facade under natural lighting

In this Project parts of the facade of the “FTown Reimagined” is 3D printed. Due

to the thinness of the hexagon thickness, the facade needed a solid support at

the back, thus the hexagon opens are not hollowed.

Photo of form model

Photo of model within context

This is a studio based design project,

focusing on the “form to facade” design

approach. The client is looking for a office

building that blends well into the context in

the suburb of Fitzroy, Melbourne.

The form of the design is developed

through a series of movements such as

pushing and shifting to create a complex

formal quality. Although this complex

quality can sometimes only be seen behind

other buildings, to me this exactly reflects

the layered, complex built environment in

Fitzroy.

CITY WALLS

“The Form reflects the Fitzroy context”

Project Four

Photo of model within context

“The Form reflects the Fitzroy context”

Project Four

Elevation Gertrude St

Elevation Lt Gertrude St

Elevation George St

scale: 1:600

A A

Plan First Floor Scale 1:600

Project Four

Section A-AScale 1:200