LiWen Choy & Hee Jin Elizabeth Cho
University of Auckland
This week, SAANZ talks to resident power couple and fashionistas of the level 5 studio LiWen Choy and Hee Jin Elizabeth Cho. LiWen is exploring the ‘search for the subjective viewer’ though methods usually involved with film production and cinematics, while Hee Jin Elizabeth is primarily concerned with the value and commodification of air and how this can be translated architecturally.
SANNZ: In short, what are your theses about?
E: Mine is a playful architectural response to the recent commodification of resources where NZ, Australia, and Canada are selling cans of fresh air to polluted regions of China. It’s centred around the idea of putting value on the often forgotten element of air.
L: In short, my thesis is about the search for the subjective viewer in architectural representation through a narrative and storytelling.
SANNZ: What inspired you to choose these topics?
E: Throughout the past four to five years I’ve always been concerned about representing immateriality and things that you can’t see. At the beginning of this year I was initially focused on experiential groundlessness but then I had this shift into an obsession with air and putting value on it.
L: I think the reason I’m interested in these ideas is the ability of the medium of storytelling to connect emotions with how you experience space and that also plays throughout a lot of films that I’ve watched. Spatial expression in cinema is just so much more true to how someone embodies a space and how they live day to day, that idea is so powerful that I want to bring that into the way I represent my designs.
SANNZ: Tell me about your supervisor and why you chose to work with them?
L: I’m working with Eu Jin Chua right now, he was the last one on the supervisor list so as I was going through everything I thought “I gotta find the right fit” and I feel like he’s the older version of me, as an academic. Over the past 30 years he’s gone into studying cinema and film and I have a lot to learn from him.
E: My supervisor is Michael Milojevic, and the main reason I chose Michael, firstly was because he was on the Alpine trip with us at the beginning of the year for the study tour, and at the beginning I was really concerned about groundlessness and he had a general paper on ‘ground’ so I thought, if I’m going to remove ground, first I must know ground. He has such vast knowledge and it’s been working very well.
SANNZ: We know you have both travelled this year and previously during your studies, has the overseas experience had any effect on your work?
L: The short answer is definitely yes, especially the previous tour that I went on [Iberia, 2015]. It really changed how I approach design in the sense that I’m not out to design objects that end up on the page as this beautiful render, just being immersed in how much buildings actually affect and reflect the culture. It put so much more weight to what I was doing when I put pen to paper, it was the process of getting myself into that and being on those sites made me want to get into that process.
E: It’s the same with me, the Alpine Tour 2017 was the first time I actually went overseas, I’ve only ever been to Korea and New Zealand and I hadn’t experienced such scale of architecture and it definitely did shift my view of the design process and even my own experience.
SAANZ: How do you feel about having to pursue ONE topic for the whole year?
E: I actually love it. Especially because it’s something we’ve chosen ourselves and I feel it’s where my passion does lie, so it’s really exciting to be able to focus on just that and delve completely into it for the entire year.
L: I didn’t exactly know what my topic was going to be so for me it was more like pursuing a chain of different topics and halfway through the year I’m now comfortable in what I’m doing.
SANNZ: When tackling a design, what is your approach?
E: I find that I write a lot to begin with, especially because with my design right now is air and it’s something that I don’t want to attempt to visualise. I feel I’ve done that through past work in editing my writing to culminate in design conclusions.
L: I think it’s something that requires you to reverse engineer the past four years and how you work. A pattern for me is whenever I read a brief I tend to have lots of images that I immediately think of and it helps to start sketching those in perspective, it helps me to scratch the edge, get it down on paper so I can stop worrying about it and then those ideas might come back later on, they might not, that’s just how I like to get started.
Below- Images of LiWen’s thesis process
SANNZ: How do you feel University of Auckland Architecture school has helped you for entering the industry in years to come?
E: I think the school definitely allows you to search for your own means of working and they definitely support you with that, through which you find your own roots and processes.
L: I think coming into architecture school I was quite closed, I was quite a private person and that’s because I didn’t really understand myself or the way I worked. What’s really helped me is the process of becoming more honest with myself, and with my tutors as well, and what’s been the greatest merit for me is at the start of every design brief I’m completely transparent and tell the tutor what I’m trying to achieve during the semester and then straight away they realise that that’s something they can really support you in. It became a lot more productive process. I think it’s what you make it. Some students might take advantage of things that others might not. The resources are there, it’s what you make of it
SANNZ: What are your plans for next year?
E: I’m not sure where I’ll be located but I will be working in an architecture office. Right now I’m working part time in an office with Tim Mein, and I’m enjoying that.
L: I’m hoping to get into production design and into the film industry and I’ve been recently getting into motion design and motion graphics, so I’m trying to bring my portfolio up to that level.
SANNZ: Do you work while studying? How do you manage a work, life, social, and in your case, relationship balance?
E: Right now I’m working two days a week and for me it’s not too difficult because my boss recognises that I have a lot of workload with thesis and he’s done it himself so I’ve got good flexibility with my work hours. In terms of relationship balance, if I’m not at work then I’m in studio and [LiWen’s] in studio and we try to fit in coffee breaks and occasional movies and such.
SANNZ: Do you ever use each other as platforms to test ideas, bounce concepts off one another etc.?
L: It was a little bit tough to begin with because we were both quite private people, we both had our ways of working and there was a bit of friction to begin with but after we got interested in each other’s projects we built on that in a certain way. It’s like a work-life integration: you don’t try to compartmentalise things into different areas of your life, but if you act seamlessly you don’t feel like you have to be a different sort of person.
SANNZ: Who is your music artist of choice when doing architecture work?
E: For me, I listen to music and I’ve had the same playlist for the past four and a half years! I usually just pick one song and that’s it for the day. My favourites are ‘Nude,’ ‘There There,’ and ‘Present Tense’ from Radiohead.
L: John Mayer has gotten me through University emotionally, but when I’m designing I listen to podcasts about anything.
SANNZ: What have been some fruitful moments in your thesis?
L: I’ve been working on storyboarding the sites and the people and how they interact with the space , specifically on the study tour. That’s how I got started and it’s given me the opportunity to discover the emotional relationship between the user and the building instead of just designing from plans and sections, those things are really objective so I wanted to take a more subjective approach to see how I could design something.
E: Along with writing I’ve been using casting and collage and image processing from those casting images because I’m talking about air and gradients, so it’s the only medium that can portray that transitional quality.
Below- Images from Elizabeth’s Thesis process
SANNZ: As two resident fashionistas of studio, can you tell us a bit about your style and how it’s developed over your time at University?
L: I think you feel once you move on from first year you really have to dress the part, at the time you wore what you thought was great: I think I wore chinos and jandals which apparently was horrible but I only found out how horrible it was long afterwards. My wardrobe has gone very neutral over the years and now I dress for comfort and in something that’s easy to match or pair.
E: I go for a consistent palette in my wardrobe so that you can pick out anything that goes together.
