Thesis: pop-up YUANLIN | caren-yeah Copy

Pop-up "YUANLIN" (园林)

Art & Architecture Senior Thesis | Individual work

Research, Design, Installation

Wesleyan University, 2017

A public pop-up garden which bridges the common ground of pop-up architecture and traditional Chinese garden

8-set Design Perspective Section

8-set Design Plan

8-set Design Rendering

The concept of the Pop-Up mirrors the temporality of the current cultural zeitgeist: everything is ephemeral, indulged one minute and rendered a footnote the next. Moments are not processed, but moved through, forgotten in the rush. So too are these structural transients; erected with linear intentions, often capitalistic in nature, consumers, not humans, arrive to leave, memorabilia in tow. A Pop-Up is not a space to be in, but a space to have been to. Exclusivity is implied in it’s very concept, and inscribed in its functionality. The Pop-Up is built with temporality in mind, a structure meant to occupy multiple spaces for short, fleeting amounts of time in order to maximize its visibility.

The Yuanlin, conversely, invites the individual to share in the occupation of space with it, encouraging patrons to exist in the moment by providing an environment cultivated with comfort and reflection as precedent.

Those who walk into the garden will be flush with an aesthetic inspired by the balance and harmony inherent in nature, grass and flora, ponds populated with communities of aquatic life, and open air, all contributing towards a motif of unity. This unity is represented in the flow of the garden as it leads and hints with its angling.