‘Ascension’ Pavillion
Located at the triangle park in downtown LA, the site is surrounded by pedestrian streets and opens to the art district. Ascension is an urban pavilion not only for relaxation, but also make people rethink our relationship with nature. Technology integrates with butterfly phenomena create a poetic symbiosis in the space. The project is inspired from the monarch butterfly migration phenomena and the butterfly’s life cycle, it uses the butterfly life cycle to describe the 3 types of relationship between human and nature.
Stage 1: Emergence
It provides private & public space for people to relax and feel embraced by nature. The outdoor garden can be entered from any direction. It’s covered with grass and lots of local plants. To create the friendly environment for butterflies and bees, trifolium repens, milkweed are growing in the garden. There is also rosemary, echium, succullents and other climber plants.
Stage 2: Erosion
Darkness and pressure create the experience of butterfly metamorphosis. People will experience the reborn just like butterflies metamorphosis. We will be trapped in the situation we made, realize our mistake and finally goes to a wider world.
The central material used is concrete, as one the most commonly used manmade material, we are trapped inside without realizing it. We no longer see the lively green but just cold grey.
Stage 3: Ascension
The final stage is when people viewed from the center of the installation of monarch butterfly migration. The installation reaches to the sky in a poetic yet powerful manner, forming a dialogue with the technology and the nature phenomena, a space for people to think about the co-evolution of human and nature.
Topophilia: River Of Life
In Jedediah Purdy's book After Nature he describes four visions of environmental imagination. This model shows the division relationship between urban environment and nature. Top of the model is the map of NY, the industrial world human built are painted black, only the nature part is like a green river runs across the city to give it life.
‘The geological layers we are now laying down on the earth’s surface are marked by our chemicals and other industrial emissions'.’ The depth of this landscape shows how our human world is just build on the surface of the nature.
The model is made of foam, torch gun burnt and pray painted, with pieces of laser cut wood on the top and tree models.