The Winners!
AURAL ARCHITECTURE
First Prize Winners
Jennifer Zhu, Bernadette Galingan
Canada
My name is Jia Yi Jennifer Zhu and I am currently going into my 3rd undergraduate year of architectural science at Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto, Canada.
My name is Bernadette Galingan, an undergraduate student studying architectural science at Toronto Metropolitan University. Currently, I am working to achieve my bachelor’s degree, with an interest in both architecture and building science streams. I am eager to continue my learning journey to develop my technical skills, including design, communication, and computer literacy. My hope is to apply my collective knowledge and refined skills with confidence to create a meaningful impact within this field of practice.
When and how you were first introduced to architecture?
Jennifer Zhu
Growing up I had always taken an interest in art and design as it was all around me. Motivated by my interest, I took an exploring technologies course when I first started high school. It led me to take technological design courses that were architecturally focused, sparking my curiosity of how great spaces are designed.
Bernadette Galingan
I was first formally introduced to the architecture field in my first year of university at the architectural science program. This was where my initial understanding and idea of architecture was broadened to the much more complex and intricate topics which it encompasses. Although, in terms of my first experience where I truly began to observe and become interested in architecture was in my childhood when I visited local churches and became encapsulated by their extravagance and detail.
What is your design philosophy?
Jennifer Zhu
I believe that the design of a space reflects the designer’s ability to empathize with the future occupants and address challenges. The design solutions should be conscious of the user experience and the impact on the existing context and environment.
Bernadette Galingan
My design philosophy is based upon evoking emotion through the creation of atmosphere, which is experienced by observing, entering, and moving through a space; thus, giving it meaning.
What does architecture mean to you?
Jennifer Zhu
Architecture for me is a problem solving tool in the built environment that responds to spatial needs of groups and individuals. It expresses cultural context and beauty through spaces while addressing functionality and comfortability. I think as stewards of the earth, architecture has an important role in shaping the impact of the built environment on the natural environment and social issues as well.
Bernadette Galingan
For me, architecture is an expression of ideas and intentions in the form of space and volume, with deep consideration towards the human experience.
Briefly explain your design process and your perspective on sensory architecture.
Jennifer Zhu
Analyzing the music and connecting the emotions felt to familiar architectural themes and elements helped me solidify a design intention. The intention guided the entire design process of the project from materiality to form. My partner and I also wanted to include sustainable features to our design that connects with the music to further explore the aural aspect with architecture.
I think that architecture has always been a sensory experience whether or not it is consciously designed with sensory in mind. Sound, touch and smell have always affected the user's experience of a space. There are different emotions felt in a quiet, musky, cozy space from a loud, anosmic, large space. For me, sound and smell can evoke emotional memories and all in all are prominent aspects of my experience of a space. Realizing this, I intend on being more considerate of the variety of non-visual senses, further exploring the roles senses play in the built environment.
Bernadette Galingan
Second Prize Winners
LiJiaxuan, TuYilan & LaiJiaqi
China
LiJiaxuan
My name is Li Jiaxuan. I am a student at Huaqiao University. I'm glad I learned architecture that I love. I am a funny person in life, and I am also a person with special ideas in my studies. I have my own design studio. This allows me to reach out to different people, we can do design together, and finally become great friends.
TuYilan
Undergraduate student at Huaqiao University. In the third grade of urban and rural planning. Partner of ODD Architecture Student Studio.
LaiJiaqi
Hello, my name is Lai jiaqi, a student of HuaQiao university, school of architecture. I come from ZheJiang WenZhou.
When and how were you first introduced to architecture?
LiJiaxuan
I have lived and grown up in building since I was born. I became interested in architect when I was a primary school student. At that time I was Interested in the shape of Koolhaas' Beijing TV station and witnessed the completion of Herzog and de Meuron's Beijing National Stadium. This made me feel the charm of building that it is indescribable . When I was in junior high school, I fell in love with football. In China, there were no professional football stadiums at that time, so I would learn about the appearance of foreign football stadiums in the video, especially the stadiums in the UK. Finally, I drew my dream Chinese football field on paper.
TuYilan
My family loves to travel, and that makes me have the opportunity to see many special buildings. It was the Sydney Opera House that really got me interested in architecture. From the moment I saw it from a distance , I was deeply attracted by the shape of its white sails. As I approached it, gradually entered the interior of the Sydney Opera House and had a wonderful experience listening to opera, I was deeply impressed and attracted by architecture.
LaiJiaqi
I was born in southern China, has always lived in .Zhejiang, junior high school to visit a series of ancient buildings in northern China, including the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the Great Wall, etc., which for the first time brought me the concept of architecture.
What is your design philosophy?
LiJiaxuan
When I first heard this music, my biggest feeling was panicky. After listening this song again and again, I can feel a kind of horror and depression atmosphere. This reminds me of the story of the darkroom I saw on a blog. Afterwards, we took 'contradiction' as the main body, and described a person in an infinite circulation space from a first-person perspective, transforming the two emotions of hope and despair into a architectural space for expression.
TuYilan
When I first heard this music, my biggest feeling was panicky. After listening this song again and again, I can feel a kind of horror and depression atmosphere. This reminds me of the story of the darkroom I saw on a blog. Afterwards, we took 'contradiction' as the main body, and described a person in an infinite circulation space from a first-person perspective, transforming the two emotions of hope and despair into a architectural space for expression.
LaiJiaqi
In my current view, the design of the building is the design of people, is to grasp the design of the space, the person who designs the space subjectively to create the atmosphere of the space, feel the space in the building, and dialogue with the building.
What does architecture mean to you?
LiJiaxuan
Architecture is emotional art. For me, architecture cannot predict the future, but it can create the future.
TuYilan
Architecture is the medium and language which I convey my ideas . And it is a container of thoughts, with no boundaries.
LaiJiaqi
Architecture is created by people, its meaning is also given by people, architecture is a process, from nothing to something, from virtual to real, from dispersion to unity, from disorder to order. The meaning of architecture is variable over time.
Briefly explain your design process and your perspective on sensory architecture.
Briefly explain your design process and your perspective on sensory architecture.
LiJiaxuan
For this music, we have asked friends who study classical music for help. They helped us analyze a lot of content from the perspective of music composition. Finally, we add our subjective feelings about music to make this work. For sensory architecture i think it is the god of human beings, in other words it controls people's emotions. Different spaces will bring people different feelings. Churches make us awed, amusement parks make us happy, cemeteries make us sad, and so on. That‘s why I attend this contest.
TuYilan
After listening to this piece of music, I first felt a sense of loneliness and oppression. I made a detailed analysis of the music, and it is not difficult to find that ‘DGE’ is constantly repeated in this piece of music. The sound and echo of falling water drops can be clearly heard in the background. The appearance of echoes and water sounds reminds me of the image of a giant building and a karst cave, and the repeated ‘DGE’ becomes the basic element of the repeated changes in the building. The rapid string music becomes a turning point in the entire architectural space. The repressed tone and repeated syllables of the whole piece lead us to create such a structure to express the contradiction. The brief appearance of strings is the brief appearance of hope in a difficult situation. What seems to be the end of a dilemma is the beginning of a new one.
I hope that this building is not necessarily a building with a clear function, that the combination of architecture and music can not only see the building as an instrument for playing music. In my opinion, music is emotional, so architecture for the purpose of presenting music does not have to be rational. It can exist without relying on traditional architectural forms, it can be a building without boundaries and a clear appearance. "Feeling" is the core of this architecture. When people are in this building, the emotions respond they can create , the feelings they can feel, and the elements they can perceive are consistent with the original music, then my goal has been achieved.
LaiJiaqi
When I listen to music, I try to put myself in the space, and try to portray the feelings that come from the sound to me, and then I try to express these spaces with me. I think the design of the sensory architecture is a very pure one of the many designs, and he focuses the design on these senses, so that it can give people a more shocking, more sincere feeling. This fascinates me deeply.
Third Prize Winners
Tianjian Li, Yifan Deng
United States
Tianjian Li
My name is Tianjian Li. I'm an architectural designer / freelance artist based in New York, currenting working at Grimshaw Architects. I hold a bachelor degree of architecture from South China University of Technology, and a Master degree of advanced architectural design from the University of Pennsylvania.
Yifan Deng
I’m Yifan Deng. I’m working as an architectural designer at Asymptote Architecture in New York. I graduated from South China University of Technology with a Bachelor degree of Architecture. Then I finished the Master of Science degree in Advanced Architectural Design in Columbia GSAPP.
When and how were you first introduced to architecture?
Tianjian Li
I have always wanted to be an artist instead of an engineer or whatever. It’s absolutely natural for me to pick architecture as my major in college as it’s more related to art practice, given few choices to pick from. And I found everything much more intriguing than any other subjects.
Yifan Deng
I’m Yifan Deng. I’m working as an architectural designer at Asymptote Architecture in New York. I graduated from South China University of Technology with a Bachelor degree of Architecture. Then I finished the Master of Science degree in Advanced Architectural Design in Columbia GSAPP.
What is your design philosophy?
Tianjian Li
I don’t necessarily have a solid design philosophy in mind. But I do find beauty in representing contradictions as well as solutions. I’m eager to test multimedia works rather than simply architectural design, which include installation, digital collage, photography, and sculptural objects. All of these are actually resembling the fulfilling purpose of architectural design, to be utilitarian and humanitarian. By reconfiguring and reconstructing existing elements from different scopes, I'm always attempting to create works that balance virtual and reality, pragmatic and hypothetical.
Yifan Deng
In my opinion, design is ultimately about its experiential quality. Understanding how hard-won it is for a building to be brought to life from sparks of ideas all the way to project completion, I believe that design is a process of intelligent problem solving which mediates conceptuality and practicality.
What does architecture mean to you?
Tianjian Li
Like I said, Architecture at its purest should be utilitarian and humanitarian. All the works should be characterized by strong conceptual legibility, innovation and a rigorous approach to refinement. But beside the humane aspect of architecture. It to me is more of a passageway to unbounded opportunities of design. It’s the interdisciplinary method of thinking that matters the most to me.
Yifan Deng
Architecture has literally become part of my everyday life. I enjoy encountering unexpected moments of when architecture is actively connected to human life and becomes part of the urban experience.
Briefly explain your design process and your perspective on sensory architecture.
Tianjian Li
We believe sensory architecture can be extremely personal but also resonate with others when given the storyline. To us, the selected music piece, “the introvert” by Michael Kobrin, is a magnificent depiction of how the introverted ones end up in an unfamiliar environment and fight to survive the situation in a miraculous manner. The story to our interpretation is both fragile and powerful in a harmonious way.
The design process was a struggle at first, I fell in love with the first selection right away. It’s tranquil with the first note, and majestic when it reaches the climax. It’s the epitome of how an introverted one would think and act. And this is also the reason I think dissecting the music would better help understanding the dilemma one is facing in the music.
Based on our understanding of the emotions, we built this Sentients Palace which specializes the story to our understanding . The pitch, texture, duration and reverberation for each element in the composition is translated to architectural elements scattered around the palace as ceilings, walls and columns that defines the character of each episode.
We believe that every human being has an introverted self deep in the subconscious. Thus, the palace is designed for all sentient beings that is curious about their sentimental self. This is a palace for meditation, healing, and for exploring the meaning of existence. Every visitor is welcomed to take this immersive journey, develop themselves into characters and become part of the story.
Yifan Deng
The topic of sensory architecture provided great flexibility to decode then interpret the music to architectural space. As always, music can be interpreted so differently among the mass audience. For us, the music piece has a few chapters with distinct nature. It’s telling us a thrilling emotional change from Suspecting, Encountering, Struggling, Fighting and eventually, Elevating.
Special mention
Honorable mention
Manoj Jaini, Abhiram kurma & CM. Aditya
Kanak Kothawale
Zindagi Mavani
Manoj Jaini, Abhiram kurma & CM. Aditya
India
Kanak Kothawale
India
Zindagi Mavani
United States
