Tianheng Zhao 赵天恒

Hello, this is Tianheng Zhao from China. I used to study decoration in Accademia di belle arti di Roma in Italy, that I could speak Italian fluently. During my university studies，I study many fine art technical ,I know how to make the sculpture ,Mosaic, lithography，which give me a strong ability to make different model to employ the space.

I am currently a second year student at the Interior Design Reuse Platform, working with the existing buildings to discover their new function is the direction I have been working for. When I started my life in Rome, I was surprised to find that most of the buildings have a long history. The Italians' awareness of the protection of ancient buildings also made me speculate about how to sustain the life of buildings. The alternation of old and new has always been an eternal theme, and the transformation of old spaces is also common in life. When the life trajectory of today's residents’ changes over time, how to re-plan the space to maintain its old historical trajectory and meet the needs of the new era is the direction I study .

My project is named:Arable Agriculture Seed Bank.In the future due to global warming, the Earth is 3 to 5 degrees Celsius warmer than it was before the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. The change of weather are having a serious impact on people's lives.Agriculture has always been the industry on which human society depends for survival and development, and it is also the most sensitive to the effects of climate change.

As the climate warms, local crop yields are decreasing dramatically in many regions, and many crops cannot even be grown on existing land, resulting in lower overall crop yields. At the same time, warmer temperatures are prompting farmers in different regions to switch to grow other crops.We need to start thinking now about how to deal with problems that will happen in agriculture in the future,and i hold that the future of global agriculture is hidden in the seemingly insignificant seeds.

The ruin is located in Lincoln, surrounding by arable land,andi s about an hour's walk from the city of Lincoln, and only 15 minutes by car. Lincoln, an important arable farming area in the UK, benefited from the region's flat and fertile land, and agriculture has always been an important source of income. From the analysis of background in Lincoln,i found that the history of economic development here is like a microcosm of human society. Britain's agricultural revolution drove its industrialisation ,while manufacture of which was also the main reason that lead global warming. Human beings cannot live without agriculture, but human activity has had a huge negative impact on its development.My project, the Arable Agriculture Seed Bank, is the 'Noah's Ark' of the future agriculture, where we store seeds of all kinds of crops in the present to help maintain the diversity of species and to deal with the problems of the future. Seeds from all over the UK are received, stored, and maintained in one place, forming a complete gene bank of crop seeds, making it easier to carry out agricultural research. Furthermore, the opened visit area may attract visitors and give them a deeper understanding of crop seeds, seed research, storage and conservation.

Rethink of how to re use coffee filter – The coffee filter, was destoryed by dish washing machine,in the project , i aim to find the new function of it. The filter itself is a combination of six cylinders, interspersed with each other. I reused it as a door handle decorated and highlight the handle section with rope.The outlet where the coffee liquid used to run down is filled with rope and can be used as a hook.'

Use as a door handle – I really enjoy that 6 cylinders interspersed with each other and make up the fliter,the interaction between volume and volume,will be the approach to explore the sapce in my next project

reuse

Investigation – Here are the pictures i took in ruin,Although the architecture itself is badly damaged,we can still find that here are many windows and doors in different heights and shapes. Walking through the ruin is like a treasure hunt, you never know what shape or height you will encounter through a door and through a window. I treat these architectural structures as volumes of different sizes, to explore their various relationships in space.

Initial Study – I chose the old kitchen in the ruin as the subject of my investigation, although it is not a large space, it has six windows, five doors and a fireplace leading to the roof.

Cardboard model — Exploration of positive forms in space – Each time when I push the black volumes into space, they may touch overlap, intersect with each other. I documented every process with photos.

Plaster model — Exploration of negative forms in space – Based on the previous work on the positive model, I made this plaster negative model. From it, I can clearly see the effect of each volume on the space ,and also see each overlap, intersect situation clearly.It was great to see how the different shapes, sizes and heights of the volumes were placed in the space and how they interacted with each other

Timber structure model — Thought on how to connect the surrounding spaces – The timber structure is built outside the space, it is aim to link saperate space together with different volumes

Historic background research – Global warming, industrial revolution, agricultural development

Map of the ruins – The ruined architecture sits in an old countryside landscape surrounded by cultivated fields and shrubs. It is about an hour walk from downtown Lincoln and only 15 minutes by car. Since the fire of 1937, the area has been neglected and dense woods have grown up, its original gardens, driveways, paths, lawns and even the building facade itself are covered with vegetation.

landscape – This is the landscape of the new plan, which has not changed much from the old one. The surrounding fields have been used as test fields, a new car parking area have been added ,and the road for the car have been planned around the fields.The road marked by green is the guide tour,the visitor can walk cross the testing fields then arrival the seed bank,or may arrival directly from the garage

Entrance to the Seed Bank

Explore with models – I divided the Crop Seed Bank into two areas.The first area is open to the public ,and the second area is the working area only open to the staff. How to design two different functional routes in the space to ensure that they are completely separate but at the same time are able to interact with each other,is the main goal I want to achieve.

Concept- Main entrance For the main entrance,i aim to make 2 saperate entrance for public and staff,i keep the orgianl sunroom as the entrance for staff,while create a new corridor for the public.

Concept- Greenhouse,Roof This the green house,the yellow volume is public route,they can not go directively to the green house,but they can see what happen from the walking path,and also see the seedbank.

Now we have the layout, but how to create space ?I go back to volume models, i used volumes to connect ruins and new service wing,accroding to the orginal position of the doors and windows,then the new space is created. Those are the images for each floor from it we can clearly see how i change volumes into space plan .

Floor plan – From it you can claerly see that on the ground floor the left space is the vistor space,and the right sapce for the staff.This two space are separate from each other but interacting through the greenhouse in the middle. In first floor,the staff space wraps around the visitor tour space. Moving to the roof, there is no clear division of space, the public and staff share this space.