SPRING 2020 Design Studio (THESIS) | Refurbishment / Apple Headquarter

My thesis proposes a new way of refurbishing buildings by taking architectural elements of the building and differentially BLOWING them UP in scale to create new programmatic and spatial possibilities.  To refurbish a building is to redefine its function and program but without losing sight of its historical past.  The Battersea Power Station served as the perfect canvas for my thesis.  As a landmark, its sheer scale was reflective of its industrial past, but as a piece of architecture, its features were not distinct but rather non-hierarchical and repetitive. By taking select architectural elements from Battersea Power Station and transforming its hierarchy through scaling, one half of the building is now reconstructed into a new office typology for Apple campus.

These newly scaled up elements create new spatial and programmatic potentials, and forge strange but familiar relationships to the rest of the building. When the scaled elements are settled back into its new form, the other parts of the building are pushed, collided and crushed.  This is especially obvious when one half of the building remains unchanged.  Its mirrored half is transformed with these moments of tension that break the conventional hierarchy of the part to whole relationship and loosen the tolerance among the architectural elements. The elements gain new programmatic identities and orientation in this new scale: from a chimney to an amphitheater, from a single brick becoming a new office, from a window frame to storefront.