#meng wang

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Meng Yang , Fei Wang & Zhao Yan by Win Tam for Harper's Bazaar China Magazine May 2018

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Xueting Guan and Meng Wang competing in the 2011 Four Continents Championships.

(Source: 1 and 2)

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Xueting Guan and Meng Wang competing in the 2011 Four Continents and 2010 Cup of China short dance.

(Photos by David W. Carmichael)

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Reflections

During this semester, what I improved the most is the presentation skills. I still remember when I first got here, honestly even before, every time I need to speak in front of a bunch of people, I got panic and my mind was in completely blank. But now, even when I’m stuck in the middle of my presentation, I would stay calm and rational to figure out my next word. Besides, I’m also excited about what I have learned in the design process in studio. This semester, our studio used precedent buildings, collages and drawings that focused on different perspectives to generate design concept, which I haven’t been through before. And each of us figured out 5 versions of our own fire station before the midterm. I think I won’t worry about just work out one design after that.

For next coming semester, I hope I could step out of my comfort zone and try things I have never done before. What I have in mind now are try new software, new design strategy, new way to represent for studio work, try to get more involved with everybody, try some crazy, fun stuff and enjoy.

Hope I could finally survive along the final week, good luck guys!

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Chicago Architecture Biennial

I spent three fifths of my thanksgiving break in Chicago and had great fun. Although it was already my second time to be there, Chicago still surprised me in so many ways.

We had lots of fun during the trip, like we enjoyed thanksgiving hot pot, went shopping together, and had great time playing games, but the best part was the Biennial. Honestly, at first, I was worried that the exhibition would be too serious and boring, but it turned out to be interesting to interpret and highly related with what we learned and did in this semester. Like the first exhibit we saw was a collection of 50 drawings of different bedrooms and a book with corresponding plans. What I feel about it is while the architects defined the bedrooms with simple lines, people who lived in them redefined the bedrooms with their unique activities and identities. When we explored the exhibition, we shared lots of comments, interpretations and similar projects we did before. We had great time, highly recommend to you guys!

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Double Ninth Festival

The Double Ninth Festival is celebrated on ninth day of the ninth month in the Chinese lunar calendar. The name of the festival originates from the yin and yang dichotomy. According to it, yin represents darkness, the earth and moon and yang reflects brightness, the sky and the sun correspondingly. Since ancient time in China, the number nine is considered as yang. Thus, the ninth day of the ninth month is also called “Double Yang Festival”.

There are lots of traditional activities on the double ninth festival as well. On that day, people usually climbing mountains to enjoy the autumn, appreciate chrysanthemum, drink special liquor, and eat special cakes for the festival.

In China, because the number nine has the same pronunciation with “long” and also nine is the largest number. The ninth day of the ninth month stands for the blessing of health and longevity of the old people, so the festival is also regarded as old people’s festival.

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Collage

Collage is a visual art form that combines staff that usually won’t be put together, and turn them into a whole. In general, by collaging different pieces, artists could either create dramatic looking art works with each piece highly contrasting each other, or completely new staff.

Collage is widely applied in all kinds of fields, in addition to painting, photomontage, and illustration. It’s also used in architecture, film, and music. For example, architects used the technique in architecture design to challenge the uniformity of modernism.

When people started to use the collaging technique is still controversial. Some of people believe it could be traced back to hundreds of years ago in China and Japan when paper was first invented in 200BC. And in 13th century, people in Europe collaged different material to make religious paintings in church. But others indicate that the word “collage” first came into our sight is in 20th century when collage art pieces became an important genre in modernism art.

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Greeting from Meng Wang

Hi everyone:

My name is Meng Wang, and I came from Qingdao, Shandong province in China. It’s a beautiful seaside city which has the best beer and seafood in China. Because Qingdao was once occupied by Germany, both its beer flavor and old architectures are in German style. And the university I graduated from last year is also located in my hometown, so I had chance to get a deeper understanding of my hometown in the perspective of an architecture student.

This summer, before I came to America, I participated in the beer festival in Qingdao. It’s an annual grand festival, and sometimes people even travel a long time for it from other cities. I enjoyed various flavors beer, barbecue, performances of bands and really had fun with my families. Although I’m just away from home for two months, I really miss all the happy moments I spent with them.

In this semester, I’m really looking forward to making friends with different cultural background and share opinions from different perspective with them.