YOU CHIA LAI

PORTFOLIO
24hr Club That Serves All Your Needs A Civic Complex Challenging the Status Quo Contemporary Study Center for Studying the Contemporaries Nine Squares Together Form an EverChanging Landscape

ISSUE #2

YOU CHIA LAI

phone: 832-689-9279 address: 1515 Bissonnet St., Unit 113, Houston, TX, 77005 e-mail: you.chia.lai@rice.edu

work experience

Design Assistant / Carlos Jimenez Studio

Assist projects in various design phases ranging from schematic design to construction drawings. Conduct all digital drawings and discuss with studio principal to make further modifications.

Dec 2013 - Present

Growth Hack Intern / ShareBloc

Strategically curate content, research market and reach potential users to sign up for a professional content sharing platform. - Generated an overall 3K+ registered users in 4 months with founders and three other interns. - Generated 838 registered users, 6.5K visitors and 22K page views in a 12-day Content of The Year contest with three other interns.

Sep 2013 - Present

Chief of Substitute Service Draftee / New Taipei City Government

Reformed internal administration rules to eliminate conflict between senior and junior draftees. Relationship between two parties improved remarkably after implementation of new rules.

Aug 2011 - July 2012

Co-founder / D.Cafe
Co-founded a co-working space that provided mentorship for early-stage startups to grow more efficiently and acted as a stage for them to acquire popularity among potential customers.

May 2011 - July 2011

extracurriculum activity

Team Leader / NTU Innovation Competition

Led team designed a public gathering space for students in NTU base on the observation and analysis of students activities in public spaces. Ranked 10th out of 128 teams.

Mar 2011 - May 2011

Team Leader / Creativity & Entrepreneurship Program Summer Camp

Led and provided guidance to teams consisted of new and prospective students of the program in a three-day start-up contest. Won 1st place.

Aug 2010

education

Rice University Master of Architecture National Taiwan University Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering
GPA: 3.34/4.00

Aug 2012 - Dec 2015

Sep 2007 - Jun 2011

skills

Photoshop / Illustrator / Indesign

3D Modeling (Rhinoceros) Market Reasearch

Web Design (HTML5 & CSS3 / Intermediate level) Chinese (Native), English (Native Fluency)

Content

01 Re-Forming & Representing a Civic Complex 07 Striated Clubbing 13 Center for Contemperary Study 19 9-Square

01
Re-Forming & Representing a Civic Complex
Core Design Studio 3 / 2013 Fall Design of a Civic Center Located Near Downtown Houston

n recent decades, public buildings represent-

public projects in the United States. At a time when corporate buildings dominate the publics attention and civic services are increasingly found online, this project makes a point for the persistence and renewal of contemporary architecture in the public realm. Start with a formal strategy dealing with the idea of multiple that correspond to program arrangement this project is exploring the possibilities of a new type of administrative building.

ing local or regional authorities have come to either resemble dull functional office sheds or replicate the formal glories of past public architecture by borrowing its formal element. The belief in contemporary architecture as a tool not only to organize civic institutions, but also represent and spatially ground them in their context, seems to have been lost since the perceived failures of the large-scale

Formal Strategy

01

1.
10. 12. 13.

2.

11.

8. 9. 7.

3. 6. 5.

5.

4.

1. Lobby 2. Service Counter 3. Tax Offices 4. Court Service 5. Court Room 6. Court Room Support 7. Commisioners Office 8. Record 9. Judges Office 10. Constables Office 11. Childcare 12. Library 13. Reference/Lending 14. Mediatheque 15. Cafe 16. Reprographic 17. Special Collection 18. Staff Office

Axonometric View

Upper Floor

Lower Floor

15. 14. 15. 16.

15.5 ft

-13.5 ft

17.

03

Mechanical Light Rack Insulation Double Glazed Glass Concrete Slab

04

02
Striated Clubbing
Core Design Studio 2 / 2013 Spring Design of a 24hr Club to complement and enhance the weekly routine of city dwellers

Without Threshold

With Threshold

he city of Houston is propelled by au-

ponds to specific programs. The landscape slows circulation and fuse border line between interior and exterior so that while heading to their desired programs, people are almost being demanded to wander through and pay more attention to the exterior environment. The project ensures the joyfulness of this wandering experience. Though the project is at building scale, it has the abilty to be projected to urban scale and creates a better exterior urban environment. In this

project, we were asked to analyze formal elements in a case study, then transformed extracted ones on to our own project.

tomobile. Given the nozoning law condition, programmatic boxes scatter on flat land. People drive to their destination, consume whatever program they desire, then hop back on the vehicles and leave. Exterior urban environment is bypassed and ignored. This project is aiming at challenging this urban behavior by utilizing architectural moves that create a continuous lanscape (I prefer calling it threshold) which cores-

Formal Element Extracted

Landscape

Programs

Icecubes

Roofscape

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14.

13.

12.

11. 10.

9.

8. 7.

6.

5.

4. 2. 3.

1. Parking 2. Entrance 3. Leisure Pool 4. Olympic Pool 5. Whirl Pool 6. Administration 7. Changing Room 8. Classroom 9. Massage & Sauna 10. Resturant 11. Food Prep. Area 12. Bar 13. Strength Forum 14. Green Room
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Center for Contemperary Study
Core Design Studio 1 / 2012 Fall Design of a Center for Contemporary Study in Rice University Campus

his project explores the moment when

grams has to be re-directed when boulders are inserted in a set of stripes. The boulders become the turning points of the architecture. Re-Direction of Circulation
Inter-Program In-a-Program

discrete meets continuous, divergent meets uniform and enclosure meets openness. The character of boulder can be described as discrete, and lack of directionality, on the contrary, stripe can be described as open and continuous. Circulation in a program and within pro13

Discrete

Divergent Direction

Enclosed

Continuous

Uniform Direction

Open

14

11

10

12

F3

F2

4 7

F1

1. Exhibition Area 2. Seminar Room 3. Classroom 4. Lobby 5. Cafe 6. Classroom 7. Waiting Area 8. Visitors Office 9. Library 10. Administrative Area 11. Auditorium 12. Library

GF

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In Stripes
Strong & Uniform Directionality Exhibition Library Visitors Offices Administration Area Entry Lobby

In Boulders
No Interruption No Directionality

Teaching Area Work Area Auditorium Cafe Public Restroom

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04
9 - Square
Rice Information Architecture Design Competetion / Fall / Group Project Representing the Foundren Study Room Availibility in a Modulating Landscape Bench.

- square is designed as a modulating land-

m the publicly available online database showing the reservation periods of the 36 study rooms in Fondren library. This information is abstracted into nine blocs of four study rooms each and physically represented by nine 2x2 squares made of 1/2thick acrylic panels array-

ed in 3x3 gr-id. Through a real-time data feed of room availability, the nine panels, reflect this information by varying their heights based on the five possible occupancy conditions for the blocs of four rooms that each panel represents. Information dictates height, and facili-

tates an ever-changing landscape of seating possibilities. Furthermore, each panel is edge-lit with 4 LED strip to illustrativelydenote a higher level of reading, namely which particular study room in a particular bloc is occupied or available.

scape that functions as a bench while at the same time physically reflecting information pertinent to the Rice student body. As the availability of study rooms change on an hourly basis, 9-Square receives this information fro-

60 1 60 3

46 4 46 3 46 2 46 1 43 3 43 2 43 5 43 6 43 7 43 8 20 6 25 40 4 25 4 45 3 45 2 42 45 2 1 41 5 42 1 36 4 36 3 36 2 43 0 5

Information Source

Represent Information

26 3 2 26

Identify Information
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26 1 20 1 20 2 20 3 20 6 20 4 5 20 25 5 25 4 25 3 25 2 25 1

Parse Information

Material Used

Rasperberry Pi

LED Lights

Arduino Board

Scissor Lift

Acrylic Impact Polystyrene

Scissor Lift Stand plywood

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