YU TING TSAI
This one-story bicycle shop is on Jackson Avenue in west Ann Arbor. The geometric shape of the building is a trapezoid with a semicircular volume on its narrow end. There is a series of window walls on the north facade. The extruded eaves create a long corridor in front of the store entrance, while the cylinders and the brick exterior wall underneath the dome create a kiosk-like space. The roof reflects the exact shapes of the building with a trapezoid and a dome.
The interior is an open space divided by interior walls. There are three small rooms on the east end that served as logistic space and washroom for the store, while there is no obvious access to the semicircular place on the upper level on the west end. Steel trusses and pipes run east-west spanning across the whole building with north-south steel beams.
This Knolled Kit-of-parts diagram shows the elements of the buildings including window walls, steel trusses, beams, pipes, bricks, wooden interior panels, metal doors, display lights, and curved ornaments.
The Storage stuff map sorts the storage containers into four kinds of major materials: Plastic, Wood-based material, glass, and metal. The plastic containers and cardboard boxes are the most commonly used storage containers not only because they are the most cost-efficient ones compare to other materials but also for their higher rates of being recycled and being reused.
The Wellness stuff map analyzed the way of using stuff in two different aspects: active usage and passive usage. The active usage includes home workout items and anti-stress fidget toys, like dumbbells, yoga mats, foam rollers, and bubble popper/wrap. The major materials of these stuff are plastic and silicone. while silicone is more often used in manufacturing these items due to its durability, recyclability, and less toxicity. On the aspect of passive usage, the map focuses on the meditating supporting items, such as candles, essential oil, and diffusers. The benefit of aromatherapy has been contributing to people’s wellness, while different fragrances provide various therapeutic sensibilities.
Based on the original building, I placed two pieces of huge shipping containers to create a courtyard. Using a couple of walls of stacked storage boxes, I framed the perimeter of the whole space to mimic the defending walls of a castle, which notion was evoked by the dome roof and brick walls of the original building.
With the concept of confetti, there are different shelvings deployed within the space, which provide multiple functions for activities. The path of certain circulations is hinted by the bulks of the boxes. The shelvings and the upper-level space provide seating area and also vertical circulation. Storage boxes with toys for stress relief all around the place are like creating a playground for finding and or opening chests and completing tasks. The diffusers are zoning the place by different fragrances, which we can sense within the space but are not visually distinguishable.
In this top view video, it begins from a plan oblique showing the whole layout of the space. As the function of screens, the revolved window wall panels are transforming the open areas into different orientations and making space physically separated but visually still connected. In order to arouse awareness of psychological well-being, there are somewhat spooky sounds in the video which implicitly signify fears and insecurities that people may have. While zooming into the courtyard area, the stacked storage boxes, foam rollers, diffusers, and anti-stress toys, and the shelvings are showing the deployment with the concept of confetti.
In this parallax video, the box wall shows a playful sense of the concept of stacked and confetti like a wonderland. The shelvings create different levels while the partly hollowed roof and ceiling bring in lights and connections to the ‘outer space’ with a sense of transcendence and security simultaneously. The stacked metal boxes function as stairs for reaching the upper level.
