Student Profile

Our goal is user-based, transforming the steep landscape between city and waterfront into a network for leisure, art, communal activities, local agriculture, biodiversity, and recycling of wastewater. Citizens define the life of any landscape; we provide and welcome everyone to a space where that life can take flight. As visitors acclimate to the rhythms of the park, at once choreographed and indeterminate, they encounter a virtual body of spaces academic, artistic, productive, and organic. From education to exhibition, creative expression to exchange, visitors navigate a hydrostatic arrangement that takes full advantage of the gradients at hand, following the flow of local waters and the orientations of city and river. The project’s structural elements extend from landscaping principles and integrate seamlessly into the surrounding environment. This work was done in studio with David Mah & Leyre Asensio. Additional authors: Songwei Chen, Matthew Gordon, Benjamin Johnson
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Research concerning local social structures and trends guided the assumptions for the design and led me to test a novel housing typology as an immediate response to the new urbanism. As part of the intermediate stage of urban renewal, existing buildings are assumed viable and become part of the new, imbuing the site with constraints and contextual qualities. The design re-articulates the unit of the “home” as a dwelling cluster, a gesture of the perpetually unfinished state of urbanization. Central to the design is the concept of the “corridor,” which provides the functional needs of minimum connectivity between separated rooms, while also maintaining ambiguity in privacy, openness and undefined usages in nature. Outstretched corridors evolve into bridges and gathering spaces, on the one hand celebrating intimate communities between generations while on the other underscoring the importance and privacy of individual units, fulfilling a desire for dynamic equilibrium between individualism and communal intimacy. Work done in studio with Milton Curry.
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This thesis looks at the nature of fibers – linear, directional, temporary, fragile, responsive, dependent, sensuous, in flux, waiting to be organized and interpreted. Fibers can be both structural and self-supporting, thus organizing the same space differently unto itself, imparting meaning while also acting as broker between user interactions. In the interest of expanding the meaning of “setting,” this thesis looks beyond the vector characteristics of the fibers in question to the technical concerns thereof, such as the effects of gravity as a barometer by which to adjust degrees of influence on the materials at hand (i.e. veneers deform in particular ways as they absorb moisture and rain from the surrounding environment according to the grain pattern). The disposition and layout of any design is the outcome of many fibers, each carrying its own social, psychological, and physical function. Fiber architecture is a mediator of information and an amplifier of fantasy.
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M.Arch.1 2012

A Collection of Works

Yuet (Karbi) Chen was born in Beijing and graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a bachelor of arts (architectural studies) with honors. After graduation Karbi remained in China for a year to work on a number of large scale developments before going to London to work in architectural practice. During her year and a half in London she also worked as a museum program coordinator and as a theater set and costume designer.

Work experiences at international offices such as OMA and Kengo Kuma & Associates on diverse international projects extended Karbi's perception of design and working systems of the field. Professional experience as researcher and visiting critic at numerous departments and organizations has trained her to be in constant pursuit of knowledge. Shortly after graduation, Karbi started her own design office to pursue her interest in small-scale design and makings along with architectural design. The experience has been rewarding, as it provides her with another perspective to understand the business.