FRANCO CHENARCHITECTURE

PORTFOLIO

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Franco Chenfrancochen@cpp.edu

Cal Poly PomonaB.Arch Class of 2017

2nd Year Design Excellence Award

Education

Skillset

Work Experience

Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Rhino 5, Grasshop-

per, V-ray

Testa & Weiser Inc.June-August 2014

Primarily used the modeling software Rhino along with Grasshopper 3D to

script algorithms. Quickly adopted to the quick pace that the various projects involved, and learned to effectively and clearly document research as a project

progressed.

Teaching AideSpring 2014, Winter 2015, Spring 2015

Assisted first year students in utilizing digital design alongside their projects. Topics covered include: basic surface

modeling, advanced surface modeling, repetitive implementation of geome-

tries to create patterning, and render-ing basics.

Cal Poly Pomona AIAS ENV Rep.Fall 2014 - Spring 2015

Served as a college council represen-tative for the American Institute of

Architecture Students. Duties include: attending bi-weekly college council meetings and lending assistance to department exhibitions and events.

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Housing StudioWinter 2015Kip Dickson

Noguchi Museum in Little TokyoWinter 2014Juintow Lin

O’Neil Observation FacilityFall 2014Alex Pang

Mt. Baldy Bath HouseSpring 2014Nadim Itani

Built: Bookshelf (2014) Bike Shelter (2013)

Competition: Christchurch Earthquake Memorial (2014) Fairy Tales Competition (2015)

CONTENT

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1One

Housing studio, personally and whimsically named, “Quiet Familiar” is as much a play on words as it is a play on the architectural vernac-ular. Set out to be a quiet mimic on the fabric of a Pasadena neighborhood, Quiet Familiar pre-fers to have a pitched roof rather than a flat roof. Quiet familiar prefers to let its residents think their thoughts over a water garden rather than a grass clad park.

A defining aspect of privacy within suburban neighborhoods is the parallel or close to parallel orientation between all houses. Either defined as a street where residences all face one axes or defined as a cul-de-sac, where they all point in-

wards to face a focal point instead. Quiet Famil-iar takes this organization and turns it into an intimate assembly of parts.

A part rotated to bear a focal point orientation is met with a part bearing a single direction orientation. At the intersection, bias is either one part, allowing it to “slide” into the other, creating a bulging volume perceived from one unit. The ancillary program consiting of the bathroom and the kitchen are located in the core, allowing the free ends of the living room and bedroom to freely intersect and interact with other volumes.

Housing Studio Winter 2015

A Section Visual with Residents Partaking in Possible Everyday Activities at 1/16 : 1’

A Section Visual with Residents Partaking in Possible Everyday Activities at 1/16 : 1’

1Housing Studio | Winter 2015 5

A Plan of the Ground Level at 1/16” : 1’ A Plan of the Subterranean Level at 1/16 : 1’

A Plan of the Upper Level at 1/16” : 1’ A Plan of the Garden Space at 1/16 : 1’

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A Picturesque Visual of the Northern Elevation With Surrounding Buildings at 1/16’ : 1’

A Picturesque Visual of the Western Elevation With Surrounding Buildings at 1/16’ : 1’

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Housing Studio | Winter 2015 7

2Two

By nature, the Noguchi Sculpture Museum is an urban infill project on the compact street facade of 1st Street in Little Tokyo. As per programmat-ic requirement, the museum must contain an outdoor area, but no distinction of whether this area should be on the ground or elevated. Con-sidering the need for pedestrian access to the Plaza behind the site, elevating the museum and placing the outdoor space on the ground was a clear way forward.

The monolithic form but airy form, reminis-cent of Noghuchi’s sculptures, hovers above the ground, and only in the slightest regards does it acknowledge it. Even the entry to the museum

doesn’t strike through the form, but rather, finds its way through the ground beneath. Circulation acts in a very similar manner, where visitors must distance themselves from the form to tran-scend or descend a detached circulation core located towards the rear.

Located on the first floor, the storage for artwork is adjacent to the temporary exhibition space, and is enclosed in glass, thus enabling the view-er to see both sides of the exhibition, and how artwork is stored and prepared.

Noguchi Sculpture Museum Winter 2014

2Noguchi Museum | Winter 2014 9

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DOWN

DOWN

UP

DOWN

DOWN

DOWN

UP

DOWN

DOWN

UP

DOWN

DOWN

UP

UP

UP

UP

1st Floor

2nd Floor

3rd Floor

4th Floor

5th Floor

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Noguchi Museum | Winter 2014 11

3Three

Located on a landscape that features a steep hill and surrounded by a scenery of coastal oak, Be-tween Sites is a project that encourages move-ment on, as well as off, the dirt paths.

The project uses a simple formal driver of booleaned spheres, bounded with rectangular extrusions to highlight the subtraction from the overall shape. In total, there are 8 pieces, a result of the three slices in each of the cardinal pla-nar directions on a cube. These derived objects are immediately familiar, and unfamiliar at the same time. Smooth spheres are clashed immedi-ately with hard, orthogonal edges that only serve to contrast the oddities.

Placement of these objects is the primary driver for the project. The site is a small crop out of the overall reserve, meaning that the entrance to the reserve lies a few miles north of the site, while the actual trail head to the site lies about a mile south. Using two of the eight pieces, a “Wel-come!” monument is placed at the entrance to the reserve, and a portable bathroom at the trail head is replaced with a permanent one. Between and beyond the two off-site pieces, architec-ture had officially taken a presence. On the site, two parallel lines were drawn for the specimen collection that allow and encourage visitors to the site to go off the given path and indulge in the site.

O’Neil Observation Facility Fall 2014

3Observation Facility | Fall 2015 13

Observation Facility | Fall 2015 15

Tower Meeting

Living Two Living One

O�ce Non-Portable Potty

Bothroom Welcome!

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0Feet

5 10 20 40

AA

AABB

BB

Up

Up

Up

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Observation Facility | Fall 2015 17

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The intention in approaching the design was to draw from the abuse of the non-orthogonal grid lines, a rather arbitrary system of constraints which were whimsically created. This resulting grid resulted in various sizes of containment, from the minutely small, to the relatively large. A focused area of the grid was subsequently cropped to amplify the scale of the grid, small remnants, either resultants of the crop, or simply carryovers from the original grid, remained. Rather than merging and performing boolean operations with these remnants with adjacent parcels, they were scaled up, and as a result became the container for the various program. Fragments of the grid were either moved up,

down, or stayed put, so the diagram can finally begin to take the shape of a three tiered bath-house.

Inspiration was drawn from the drawings of Piranesi, more specifically, Le Carceri. This guiding factor led the project to take on a convoluted form as pieces of the building were being adjusted, and was another main factor of resizing rather than discarding the minute parts. There are plenty of foreground, midground, and background elements within the bath house to ground the viewer and draw him in, very much in likes of Piranesi’s detailed drawings.

Mt. Baldy Bath House Spring 2014

4Bath House | Spring 2014 19

ColdBath

Main Bath

AdminCustodial

Relaxation Deck

LaundryShowers

Bathroom(M) Bathroom

(F)

Changing(F)

Changing(M)

Storage

Sauna

Steam Room

Deck

HotBath

Bath House | Spring 2014 21

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Bath House | Spring 2014 23

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Bookshelf

The modular nature of the bookshelf lends itself its structure. Inspiration was taken from the Metabolist ideas of 60’s where modules can be added for future expansion.

Materials used were reclaimed 1/4” Plywood, corner braces, and standard zip ties.

Bike Shelter

“Linear Wrap Bike Shelter” is based on the notion of how we define spaces. “Space,” as we defined it was contained within a rectangular prism the size of a standardized parking spot with seven feet of vertical clearance. On the surfaces of this rectangle, one continuous line was drawn, only differing in the angles of protrusion onto adjacent planes. This line was imagined as a cut across the surfaces of our rectangular prism. A last step was taken where we took the negative of this model and propagated this new form as the container of the space, so rather the cut being transparent and permeable, it has now become opaque and the solid.

Built Projects 2014/2015

5Built Projects | 2014/2015 25

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Built Projects | 2014/2015 27

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Christchurch Earthquake Memorial 2014

The proposal for an earthquake memorial is comprised of two parts: the two interlocking, enclosing walls that slip past one another in the Z-axis to suggest a tectonic shift, and the memorial monument which is located in the in-between of the shift. Slices from several circular rings surrounding the monument are extruded at three heights to provide for several degrees of intimacy, with the lowest extrusion serving as seating and the highest extrusion to exclude all surroundings besides the sky. These extruded walls will bear the engraved names of the vic-tims of the earthquake.

Fairy Tales Competition 2015

Banished eras ago, the paper architectural ge-ometries were deemed illogical, unaesthetic, and unconventional.

As fate would have it, no one idea could be held against its will, and during the annual earth-quake of 2052, these forms were released.

They bonded, imploded, subtracted, multiplied, leaving the citizens no option but to gawk in wonder as something amiss finally looms across their town.

Competition Entries 2014/2015

6Competition Entries | 2014/2015 29

Competition Entries | 2014/2015 31

Franco Chenfrancochen@cpp.edu

Additional CreditsBookshelf: Lauren Ishibashi, Michael Gonzalez, Samuel Rubio

Bike Shelter: Haley Galian, Naomi Herring, Carmen Ng, Patricia Reyes, Megan Symm, Lusine YeghiazaryanChristchurch Memorial: Zachary Green, Yoseph Wolde-Mariam

Fairy Tales: Kyat Chin, Nicole Doan, Zachary Green