los angeles, CALIFORNIA
Southern California Institute of Architecture
Critic: Andrew ZAGO

…This requires high efficiency in building construction. Strategical urban planning and design for high buildability in architecture is the current solution adopted by authority. However, this results in banal floor layout, typical form and separation of programs in highrise mixed-use architecture.
With the increasing scale of a building and the ability it has to contain complex urban programs, a single architecture is able to influence the urbanism of a city. This thesis explores how urban programs could be “remixed” inside a mixed-use building to create new opportunities. Based on a collage composed of reorienting OMA’s proposal for Parc de la Villette, the project not only seeks to provide connections between floors but also creates dynamic space where people from different program can interact with each other. With different programs remixed under a single roof of a highrise architecture, which has no typical floor, the project challenges both the current urban planning and building construction situation in Singapore, and seeks to offer a new form of urban life in the city.

sP: What or who influenced this project?
MX: There are so many people and things that influenced this project, but the most important person, for whom I am very grateful, is my thesis advisor, Andrew Zago. It is not only because he is the person who would always provide me with valuable advice, but also because his previous two design studios and one visual studies class that I have taken, greatly influenced this thesis project. Both the two design studios worked in the context of city and urbanism, while the visual studies class focused on techniques detail with large building section. All these became useful knowledge and weapon for me to work on my thesis project. (Refer to my attached image for Andrew Zago’s Visual Studies Class “On Technique” in Summer 2019)

sP: What were you reading / listening to / watching while developing this project?
MX: Since the project is based on a Collage of OMA’s Parc de la Villette, I was referring to some of OMA’s projects. Also, I was reading a few books, such as Also Rossi’s “The Architecture of the City”, Rem Koolhaas’s “Delirious New York”, Alex Wall’s “Victor Gruen: From Urban Shop to New City”, Le Corbusier’s “Radiant City”, and also O.M.Urgers and Rem Koolhaas’s “The City in the City Berlin: A Green Archipelago”.

sP: Whose work is currently on your radar?
MX: I am currently looking at OMA, Herzog de Meuron, MVRDV, and SANNA.