Ming Ouyang
As an interior design practitioner, I expanded my horizons through this one-year master’s course, by spending more time on Core Research Methods, looking at each design stage in a critical thinking way, and constantly self-reflect to pursue more profound logic and connections rather than superficial phenomena. For me, interior design is art about “home”. The process of designing works from scratch always makes me struggle but happy; I also always believe that art is inspired by life but beyond it. Therefore, I always try to express my thoughts, emotions, and experiences through my project to make my work warmer. I hope I can always maintain independent thinking and be full of enthusiasm for life and creation.
Level 9¾ – OVERVIEW OF DESIGN LOGIC
This research topic originated from my own personality and experience, combined with the trend of singlism in the post-epidemic era. I intend to explore people’s different understandings of “Being Alone” and “Loneliness” as a single person, reflecting the psychological demands of this type of “non-mainstream” people for living alone. Therefore, this project focuses on researching the contradiction and connection between single people’s living space and psychology. By selecting an appropriate project site, conducting research and questionnaires on the target audiences currently living in it, and considering the psychological and physical effects of the environment, traffic, time, etc. on people living alone, I am committed to creating a utopian singles community space from a surreal perspective.
Before I proceed to the specific area I intervened in one by one, I would have an overview of my design process and logic route. As the diagram shows, There are several “key numbers” and points throughout my entire design process which strongly formed my overall intention and final outcomes, and it will help not only myself but also my audiences to go through my work briefly.
LEVEL 9¾ – UTOPIAN SINGLES COMMUNITY
In order to understand the combination of old and new buildings and spaces more intuitively, I decomposed the entire building into different components according to functional divisions. As shown in the overall exploded diagram, the entire public space contains four major functions outside the original building. The largest part of the volume is “the glowing box” which connects the courtyard and the rooftop levels with elevators and stairs in the middle, while the roof garden contains three functional spaces: Pin-cat café, Moonlight theatre and Galaxy campsite. The specific internal functions of each space will be further analyzed in the following figures.
LEVEL 9¾ – PART 1 – WATER
Water is the source of life, it adheres to the surface of the earth, nourishes the roots of the land and trees, and is the foundation of everything in nature. This is the fundamental reason I set up water as the theme at the very bottom of my project. In addition, I named the whole central courtyard and vertical pivot part “The Glowing box”, which is intended to express a vision of creating a beautiful and peaceful living environment for single people living alone in the city, hoping that it is not just a place to sleep, but to become an attractive place like light, where people who live alone can get along better with themselves.
LEVEL 9¾ – PART 2 – AIR
Everyone needs to breathe. Air floats between the water and the sunlight, so we can breathe freely. It acts as a buffer zone that wraps and protects everything on earth, providing us with a safe and warm umbrella, just like the small solitary space we have always lived in. when we feel insecure, we can close the windows and hide in our little world. However, if we need to breathe new air, we can open the windows to the balcony and interact with the natural world outside. Therefore, I chose “air” as the element and theme of this level to express my reflection on the living alone experience and in response to the site issue I identified in the site analysis chapter.
THREE RROTOTYPE
LEVEL 9¾ – PART 3 – SUNLIGHT
Sunlight is the last and highest layer of the three life elements I mentioned earlier. It comes from the energy emitted by the sun. And located on top of the air and water but has solid penetrating power simultaneously. We know the direction of our life until we have light, which is as essential to humans as trees need sunlight for photosynthesis. Therefore, combined with the issues identified from on-site analysis and the preliminary idea in the initial concept chapter, I will explore and present a series of spatial functions around the theme of light, which are mainly divided into three parts -“Pink-Cat Cafe”, “Moonlight Theater” and “Galaxy Campsite”.
LEVEL 9¾ – THE COMIC & STORY
CREATING A CHARACTER – A CAT FANTASY JOURNEY
I came across a clip from a TV show, as shown in the video by scanning the QR code below, which is from 35:42 – 38:10 (but unfortunately there is a Chinese tv show without English subtitles). where an entrepreneur discusses the relationship between people and pets in modern society and why his ultimate ideal is that people and animals live Together. He talked about his ultimate vision is that people live with animals, and why people will eventually live with animals, he stated two relatively basic reasons, the first is that the lack of personal life philosophy leads to the emptiness of human beings creates a feeling of loneliness from the individual spiritual aspect. In addition, the development of modern society has reached a certain level, while the fragmentation of information and the pursuit of individualistic interests have caused the distance between people to be pushed farther and farther. In this case, people need to be accompanied by animals as other creatures. Compared to other methods of soothing loneliness, interaction and companionship with animals is a mutual relationship, with an emotional connection rather than a cold object.
This clip made me think about the relationship between people and loneliness. Pets are indeed an effective way to dissolve loneliness and enhance the sense of fulfilment in the lives of people who live alone. I am thinking if I can introduce the concept or character of pets, and express my space vision in a childlike and interesting way, which can not only connect with my theme: living alone and psychological level of loneliness and companionship, but also build a new bridge to connect the space and my theme.
On this basis, I revisited Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film “My Neighbor Totoro” (Miyazaki, H.1989), a very childlike story about a series of heartwarming stories of two little girls accompanied by their neighbour Totoro, which are similar to a cat. To a certain extent, it coincides with a series of keywords such as my theme of loneliness and companionship. Moreover, although cats are very good friends of human beings, they will always maintain the characteristics of independence and quietness and enjoy it. They are more likely to “be alone”, like the type of single person represented by me, enjoy living alone and quiet moments. Therefore, I would like to use “Cat” as my spatial role to express my spatial stories and concepts in a narrative way.
