Architecture

Hong Kong architect fits 24 rooms into a 330 square foot apartment

May 11, 2010 · 
Post a comment ·
Architecture · 
By Vu Nguyen

You have to see this to believe it. Gary Chang, an award-winning architect from Hong Kong, grew up in this tiny apartment with his parents, three sisters, and a sublet. Chang, now 46, still lives in the flat, and has spent most of his adult life redesigning his miniature flat into what he calls a “domestic transformer.” He managed to fit 24 rooms into 330 square foot of space by using sliding units, hung on metal tracks on the ceiling, that can be moved around to form different configurations. It is like playing with an extra large set of LEGO. If you think that housing in New York city is expensive, you better think twice. Chang’s apartment now worths about $1.3 million, which is almost $4,000 per square foot.

Chang's apartment graphics

For more information and interesting visuals, head over to Toxel

Baroque architecture of Arequipa, Peru

Nov 15, 2008 · 
Post a comment ·
3D, Architecture, Awards winners, Portfolio, Travel · 
By Vu Nguyen

This is my last project from school. In fall 2006, I spent 10 days with a group of fellow journalism students in Arequipa, Peru producing multimedia stories. Each of us covered an aspect of the city. I chose to cover the city’s architecture. We used all kinds of media such as photo, video, audio and graphics in this project. The project was sponsored by Sister Cities International.

I spent a lot of time on this project. It still is the most ambitious 3D project that I have ever worked on. I started with an idea of creating a 3D virtual tour of the famous Santa Catalina Monastery. Later on, I decided to do the main plaza (Plaza de armas) as well as a bird view map of the whole downtown area.

Since I didn’t have enough references to create a realistic model, I ended up spending a lot of time taking pictures and drawing hand maps of the monastery. In the end, I managed to put all the hundreds of doors and windows in the correct place (or in my dream I did :) ).

On the down side, there is a couple of annoying bugs we never fixed.

Click here to view the graphics

Awards and honors
2007 – One of Times magazine’s 50 best Web sites of 2007

Funny comic about architects

Nov 14, 2008 · 
Post a comment ·
Architecture, Cartoons, Funny · 
By Vu Nguyen

A funny comic about architects

I just stumbled upon this one recently and thought it is pretty funny. I think it applies to designers and developers as well.

I can’t track down who is the author to credit :/, but I found it from this web site

View more projects »