AUTONOMOUS CRAFTSMANSHIP

Year Spring 2022
Location Syracuse, New York
Advisor Elizabeth Kamell
Team Muwen Li
Category Integrated Design Studio | ARC 409
Award KING + KING Integrated Design Competition // Finalists

This project explores the concept of technocentric resilience through the design of a 50 feet tall digitally printed ceramics wall on the north end of the extension gallery to the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York. Designed by I.M. Pei as his first art gallery, the Everson Museum holds the largest collection of ceramic art and artifacts inthe U.S. as part of Syracuse’s historical legacy with handcrafted ceramics. The proposed ceramic galleries extension explores the material quality of ceramics by utilizing the 3D Printed ceramics wall as an integrated HVAC component that sustains the building. The project is inspired by the structural strategy of the Everson Museum. Similar to the Everson Museum, this project is composed of a set of steel cantilever trusses supporting a double glass facade, which creates an open space facing the plaza and displays the digitally fabricated ceramics wall, making the gallery a sculptural art itself. The design aims
to amplify the difference between handmade ceramic objects and contemporary fabrication methods and the wall functions an art installation, an enclosing system, and a passive heating and cooling device, creating a tempered environment for the museum.

The project explores the limits and possibilities in ceramics / terracotta as a sustainable construction material. This project pioneers ceramic’s thermal properties by implementing a passive hydronic heating / cooling system within the digitally produced ceramic wall. In the summer, cool water collected from the roof can circulate within the ceramic wall panels to emit cool air; In the winter, heated water circulates behind the terra cotta to produce a thermally dense radiation system.