simon_burk

Final Submission

2008-11-05T23:06:00.001-08:00

A combination of tracing, experimentation and discovery brought about the design of this building while also tackling the five principles of landscape architecture; reciprocity, materially, threshold, insertion and infrastructure. The ideas of splitting or fragmentation of contours and their connections with the people/buildings surrounding them were used to define the spaces/appearance of my building. The process of doing so resulted in a trail and error technique in discovering how everything would work and further become people friendly. In describing landscape architecture I managed to break down the subject matter and resort the information into a form (reciprocity) plus the building also provides the public with a easier access to the oval while minimizing its impact on passers (insertion). It invites people to discover what lies underneath (threshold), while also using the earth lying on the structure to define materiality. The most important though is infrastructure because the building, as such, is a community center and encourages locals to mingle together. Thus the roof and the ramps leading into the structure allow for people to either to meet underground in a central foyer or on top of the building while circulating from footpath to oval.

Floor Plans 1:200, Sections 1-4 1:200

Exploded Axonometric of structure, layout and roof 1:200, Sections 5-8 1:200

Western and Eastern Elevations 1:200, Sections 9-16 1: 200

Longitudinal Cross-Section 1:100, Sections 17-20 1:200

Unable to take photos of model at this time due to assessment from Dijana Alic.

Processes, Ideas and Final Decisions

2008-11-05T22:54:00.000-08:00

This first diary entry, if you want to call it that, were studies of the landscape in context of reciprocity, materiality, threshold, When looking back at these drawings you can see the investigation of splitting and threshold of contours, this investigation led from one stage to another before the construction of my building, which i will illustrate later in this post.
While this project was meant to use the land as a source of inspiration, it is also helpful to look into other architect's work that would fuel my design ideas. Above are references to architects and buildings, and below is explanations of how these works help me.

The idea of half floors was a way of translating circulation into a process of continuous movement which was explored in the analysis of nature being a 'growing' entity. In order to get to this stage i was exploring the use of forms and their skins that would lead to the form being shaped by the contour and the skin shaped by the surrounding fauna.

Thus when i put these ideas together i used the contours as forms, trees to create a courtyard and a skin to not only create more light for people walking inside, but also to use the fauna as an 'image' of nature. As you can see one of the captions mentions BLOCKADE, and in essence from the road thats what it would appear as. From here i would explore the buildings impact on the surrounding buildings by reducing its impact on neighbors but at the same time improving its design and appreciation.

On the top right corner you can see a quick look into a very large canopy and in the lower left corner an idea of relating the land, the roads and voids to create the shape of my building. Although this didn't define the shapes so much in the final design, it gave me the ideas necessary to explore a sunken building with a roof emphasizing growth, fragmentation and integration.

When looking at skins and forms from architects like Herzog & de Meuron, the shapes used are usually very flat and boring, but i was interested in looking at the process of cladding a curved wall. These next couple entries below show you my investigation into creating walls with a curved roof above, just like in the City of Culture of Galicia by Peter Eisenman.

These are the first sketches of what look like the final model. Originally the roof was going to be curved but it was always going to house a void inside for either a tall standing tree or to be used to let sun into a usually darkened space. As you can see on the bottom left of the drawing there is two pieces to the roof and each roof was going to overlap the other, but at later stages this proved almost impossible didn't capture the same feel when looked from above.

Because this subject was tied with Construction and Structures part of the course i had to look into some sort of way to make the roof possible. Thus i came up with a truss type system usually used and made from steel in concrete, and was able create a type of two-way slab instead of the usual lightweight roof system. This system wasn't used throughout but influenced the structure on both the northern and southern end of the final design.

These last twp drawings where the final stages of design before the physical model was built. The drawings illustrate the shape of the roof and how it would b supported. Instead of quick sketches as above, these drawing help considerable more because they have been drawn to scale and can be analyzed in relation to people.

When dividing spaces i find it always easier to draw the areas to scale and then placing them into the building, this technique did work, but in a more orthodox manner. In that the spaces where defined using interesting angles and heights.

Mock Up Models

2008-11-05T22:24:00.000-08:00

During the 3rd submission where we were asked to submit final designs, i found it mere impossible to draw any sections or drawings without a model. This led to a series of sketchup models that helped create everything for the final submission. Below are a few pictures of the models and how the are created.

This was the first mock-up model that mapped out the contours of the land with the surrounding streets and used the voids in between to define the building. For the second submission the building behind the roof was inspired by this model.
And again you can see the investigation into the mapping/construction of the building.
When exploring the impossibility of supporting the roof, the use of a dia-grid was incorporated. The model above is the final sketchup model and show the guides used to create such a complex form.
Creating the roof was another step. As you can see it is flat, the roof follows the forms that support it underneath and thus also creates a unique cut that shows a less uniform split in the earth.
Mapping out the ground was the first stage in this model, once shapes were set you could easily pull them up, but what remained hard to judge was the clearance for the people underneath.
Above is the final model with roof and all. East Elevation.
Looking down into the building from the roof.
Taking off the roof to expose the structure greatly helped my exploded axonometric, which seemed impossible from the start let alone the end.

And finally the process of discovery led to the analysis of my building via 20 section or fragmentations. This was the defining factor in the buildings design and connects the influence my map analysis with the creative process of my building. Although the process was tiring, it brought about growth, meaning, learning and inspired a what i would deem a crazy design.

Edges, Internal and External Spaces.

2008-09-11T17:58:00.001-07:00

North facing section through furthest quarter of structure. This end of the building illustrates the start of the sloping grass hill and the relationship between the building facing it. Also illustrated is the background shapes of the buildings and helps enhance the buildings placement over the park. The concept shown is highly influenced by the themes of materiality and insertion. As you can see the building tries to hide itself from the passer-by as a camouflaged hill/seating area for fans and supporters. The three-story building facing uses a patterned glass and concrete skin to hide the structure/show the building as a material and not as a form. This concept of skin is highly influenced by Herzog and de Meuron's exploration of materiality in projects such as the Ricola Storage Factory and Pfaffenholz Sports Facility. After further review and experimentation i have decided to move this glass/concrete technique into the faces of the pathway and extend another floating ceiling above, thus incorporating a double hill folded shape.

West facing section. This section exposes the underground interior/exterior and illustrates the ratio of ramping in order to get to this space. One aspect i have to incorporate more into this design is the influence of tree and natural vegetation, which will be superseded in the next design submission. You can also see in this section the folding nature of the hill and thus its effect if used on a double hill.

1:20 north facing section of the structure and proportions/relations of the human body. As you can see in the background the three-story building adds another dimension to the curvature of the hill and compliments the use of nature within design. The section helped illustrate the type of structure needed and is thus a starting point for a long trial-and-error process.

Clay model that helped me illustrated the curvature of the hill and the overall emotive nature that i want to achieve when i finish.

Building, Site, Landscape

2008-08-24T06:01:00.000-07:00

Site Analysis...

This a1 includes 3 x 4 meter contours broken down into property lines, streets, trees, public and private domains and surrounding building footprints. Also included is the sun path on July 21 at 9am for the buildings surrounding the oval/site.

The 3 other contours contain the elevations from 14 meters downs to sea level. On the top right is the threshold created by the buildings surrounding the oval/site highlighted by the darkness of building closest and the lightness of the buildings furtherest/hardest to see. On the bottom left is the sun path for December 21 at 3pm when the is the highest in the sky.

Conceptual model...

When trying to capture the threshold held between each level of elevation i came across an interesting pattern or infrastructure of surrounding elements that created the landscape. While trying to incorporate the contours into the building i came up with the conceptual model below. The building has to facilitate for a grandstand, thus the seating and awning at the front facing the field. But, behind this is an attempt to use the interesting curvature of the contours to mimic the shape of a building. By separating the building i have created a chance to vary the roof height and play on the involvement of nature and its part in the community. This model was highly influenced by Toyo Ito's Tod's Omotesando Building, Preston Scott Cohen's Torus House and Mansilla + Tunon's Museum of Cantabria. Refinements still have to be made on the facade of the building, the interior, and the courtyard, but ideas will have to discussed in future.

Project 3: Art Gallery

2008-06-17T02:04:00.000-07:00

I picked a site that appeared out of context with the neighbouring buildings and thought to fill it in with something that matched the decorum. It was a long and wide site so i only required 2 storeys to house all the space needed. The biggest issue that i encountered was bringing light into the gallery space without any direct sunlight hitting the artworks. By creating an elevated roof system and a large void in the middle of the structure i was able to bring an even light amongst the gallery occupants. Using a couple other features such as tying the courtyard with gallery space and channelling all the movement towards one side of the building i was able to create a suitable design that met the brief. What the structure did lack was some detailing on the entrance and the proportion of spaces for the apartment and other facilities within the building.

View from Rose Ln

159 King St

161-163 King St (Site)

165 King St

Site Map 1:500

Light distribution of section and plan

Floor Plans 1:100

Sections and Elevations 1:100

MODEL

Project 2: Edward Hopper Morning Sun

2008-06-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

The industrial nature of buildings outside the window brings forth the idea of an autonomous society where no individual can have a unique and personal life. But by using the image of a window the lady within her home stares out at the others and questions her role in life or her personal feeling. In trying to capture this image i was experimenting with the passage of a being from starting a straight life to one of creativity and passion, then to one of reflection and learning. Thus all three individual buildings describe a person's stages in life and show the comparison between the emotions kept within the personal life and the automatic nature of society outside. That is why when somebody enters the building they gradually are taken through each step and on exiting the building experience the transition back to reality.

Edward Hopper's Morning Sun

Plan 1:100

Section A 1:100

Section B 1:100

Axonometric 1:100

MODEL

Project 1: Villa Can Feliz, Jorn Utzon 1992

2008-06-15T06:37:00.001-07:00

As an earthy type structure, Villa Can Feliz is called the temple of the mountain due to its construction of modular yellow sandstone blocks. Trying to find the best place on the hillside, Utzon found that the poetry of the location where the building is now placed, gives the greatest views and sense of landscape. The building is of very simple construction, made from local stone, flag stones, small concrete girders and roof tiles but is captures the nature of its location.

Section A 1:100

Section B 1:100

Plan 1:100

Program Parti 1:200

Structure Parti 1:200

Enclosure Parti 1:200

Program 1:200

MODEL

FILEFRONT

2007-10-23T23:34:00.000-07:00

http://files.filefront.com/DM+ARCH1102+EXP3+SIMON+BURut2/;8874565;/fileinfo.html

IN GAME PLAY

2007-10-23T21:36:00.001-07:00

Resting here at the meet place we encounter the desk space to the right of the screen which emphasises power through its growth from beneath the floor, like how these two rose to universal recognition. The lower elevator on the left is trying to pull some oriental principles from Japanese culture while also incorporating some modernist aspects of design. Thus to the hints of blue within a concrete backdrop allows for a more conceptual and interesting approach to aesthetics.
Looking from within the depths of the lower space we can view Carlos Slim's authoritarian space above, this isn't hinting on what Zhang Yin is going to become but is a tranquel space where both can dwindle together confortably. The arrangement of spotlights in conjuction with the Gordon Matta Clark inspired sectional splits allows for an interest aesthetic to an aggresive looking but peaceful space.

To place Carlos Slim within his realm of greatest i thought of a space that represented the great cathedrals of Rome and the sorts. Although anybody would feel belittled within this space, it has a grandure that makes his money seem worth while, or figuratively speaking in "the bigger the better" terms. While moving throughout this space i thought my own textures would incorporate a closer relationship with the profile than any other architectural material out there.

EXPERIMENTING WITH LSHAPES

2007-10-23T21:35:00.001-07:00

WHAT DO U MEAN MOVING TEXTURES?

2007-10-22T07:50:00.002-07:00

Trying to grasp the theme of movement thoughout this project, including the side of textures, i have arranged my desired surfaces in a sequential order from steady to fast moving. Reflecting back on EXP 2 i thought the best way not only to get contrast in colour but in feel was to lay out your options in the best possible order.

ELEVATOR ANIMATION

2007-10-09T03:13:00.000-07:00

Exploring L'forms

2007-09-18T19:58:00.000-07:00

Ratan Tata article

2007-09-11T18:43:00.000-07:00

Land Rover, Jaguar on our radar, confirms Ratan Tata

Posted online: Sunday , August 26, 2007 at 0019 hrs IST
New Delhi, Aug 25 Tata Group wants to buy Ford Motor Co’s Land Rover and Jaguar luxury brands, chairman Ratan Tata has confirmed. “We certainly have an interest in that,” he said in an interview.

Tata Motors Ltd had previously declined to comment on reports that the group has bid to buy the two UK-based brands.

Tata, whose Rs 1-lakh car project at Singur is facing stiff political opposition, also lauded West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and said it was because of the latter that the company had not moved out of the state.

“A lesser person would have succumbed to the political pressures… I would have just picked up my stakes and gone to another state,” he said.

The purchase of the luxury nameplates would increase the global reach of Tata Motors and curb its reliance on the domestic market, Tata said in the interview.

Ford executive vice-president Lewis Booth, supervising the US automaker’s efforts to sell the two brands, had said on Friday that the company would not announce a sale until after September. Ford received preliminary proposals last month and is continuing discussions with bidders it refuses to identify.

The US automaker wants to complete the sale of Jaguar and Land Rover by the end of this year or early next year, Booth has said. Ford paid $2.5 billion for Jaguar in 1989 and $2.73 billion for Land Rover in 2000.

Ford received preliminary offers from private-equity firms, including TPG Inc, Cerberus Capital Management LLC, Ripplewood Holdings LLC and One Equity Partners LLC, according to sources familiar with the proposals. Also bidding are two Indian automakers, including Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, they said.

Tata also said the failure of the Indo-US nuclear deal would be a “serious setback” for the country and could impact inflow of foreign direct investments.
“I believe the only people happy to see this not happening are probably Pakistan and China,” he said.

—Agencies

Carlos Slim article

2007-09-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world

The son of a Mexico City shopkeeper has built a staggering $59 billion fortune. Fortune's Stephanie Mehta tells the inside story of how he made it to the top.

By Stephanie N. Mehta, Fortune senior writer
August 20 2007: 12:12 PM EDT
(Fortune Magazine) -- I remember there was a time when the value of his enterprises was very low," recalls Patrick, the youngest son of Carlos Slim Helú. It was the early 1980s, and Mexico was in the depths of a massive financial crisis. Periodically the elder Slim would round up his three teenage sons for an economics lesson. Sitting them down in the living room of the family home, Slim would produce a single handwritten list. One line would show, for instance, how a Mexican insurance company was selling for far less than a similar American insurer. Another would show that compared with European candy or cigarette makers, Mexican manufacturers were drastically undervalued. "It was a very, very long time ago," says Patrick, "but I absolutely remember him teaching us at an early age."

For Slim, a onetime math instructor, this was no mere academic exercise. Yes, he wanted to instill in his sons the same lesson his father - a Lebanese immigrant who started acquiring real estate in Mexico City during the Revolution of 1910 - taught him: Though Mexico will have its ups and downs, don't ever count the country out. But Slim wasn't just teaching, he was buying. He spent $55 million on an insurance company. He took a stake in retailer Sanborns. He invested in a hotel chain.

Now those early investments are paying off big time. His three heirs - Carlos Jr., 40; Marco Antonio, 39; and Patrick, 38, run day-to-day operations at various Slim businesses and are increasingly making strategic decisions, while their father, who had heart surgery in 1997, pulls back. And Slim's investments in downtrodden Mexico? They laid the foundations of a sprawling, $150 billion business empire whose growth in recent months has turned Carlos Slim Helú into the world's richest man.

By our calculations, the 67-year-old Slim has amassed a $59 billion fortune, based on the value of his public holdings at the end of July. This number puts him just ahead of perennial No. 1, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose net worth is estimated to be at least $58 billion. But Gates is selling off his single greatest source of wealth, Microsoft stock, to fund his foundation, while Slim's fortune is growing at a stunning clip. His net worth jumped $12 billion this year alone. His family's holdings represent more than 5% of Mexico's 2006 gross domestic product, and Slim-controlled companies make up one-third of the $422 billion Mexican Bolsa, or stock exchange.

Portly and often puffing a cigar, Slim could pass for a latter-day Latin American J.P. Morgan. But with his dominant stakes in everything from phones to finance, his business profile more closely resembles that of John D. Rockefeller, who likewise thrived in a loosely regulated environment. (For the record, though, even in current dollars Rockefeller's wealth pales in comparison to Slim's: At his death in 1937, Rockefeller was worth $20.3 billion, representing one fifty-second of 1937 U.S. GDP.) The average Mexican encounters a Slim-owned business when she visits an ATM, drives a car, stops for coffee, and especially when she picks up the phone - Slim's Teléfonos de México controls 92% of the country's phone lines, and his América Móvil wireless service has a 70% market share. George W. Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William & Mary, coined the term "Slimlandia" to describe how entrenched the Slim family's companies are in the daily life of Mexicans.

It's not a reverential term. Many Mexicans hoped privatization, which began in the early 1990s, would create competition and drive prices down drastically. That hasn't happened. "Slim is one of a dozen fat cats in Mexico who impede that country's growth because they run monopolies or oligopolies," says Grayson. "The Mexican economy is highly inefficient, and it is losing its competitive standing vis-à-vis other countries because of people like Slim."

"The accusations are not well-founded," Carlos Jr. fires back during an interview. He then pulls out an analyst's report showing how the average price of long-distance phone service in Mexico compares with that in other countries. Mexico is third cheapest, according to the report, behind the U.S. and Finland. (A recent study by the World Bank paints a different picture, showing that Mexico's rates for monthly service and residential phone hookups are among the highest in the developing world.)

Wooing the public isn't exactly a favorite activity for the Slims. "I think sometimes when you are successful in business," says Slim in heavily accented English, "you have others trying to turn public opinion against you because they are trying to compete with you." Slim, however, is beginning to court public opinion, pledging earlier this year to increase the size of his charitable foundations. Meanwhile, his sons are doing what the Slims do best: making more money.

***

Anyone expecting to find monuments to the Slim financial empire in Mexico City - a gleaming TelMex tower jutting out of the skyline or an América Móvil stadium - would leave disappointed. In fact, América Móvil, Latin America's largest provider of wireless services, is housed in a converted tire factory. The juxtaposition of austerity and wealth can be quite odd, as evidenced by a recent visit to the headquarters of Inbursa, Slim's financial business. Just beyond the lobby is a makeshift art gallery that features a rotating selection of paintings on loan from the Museo Soumaya, a Slim-financed fine-arts museum named after his wife, who died in 1999. The room is a bit shabby. It is poorly lit and smells faintly of cigarettes; several large crates are propped against one of the walls. "We had several El Grecos here," Arturo Elias Ayub, Slim's son-in-law and spokesman, says matter-of-factly. There's also a folding table in the center of the room. "Mr. Slim sometimes likes to eat his lunch here," Elias adds.

The famous Slim thrift - he used to show up for business meetings wearing a cheap calculator watch - extends across the entire company. Years ago he wrote "official principles" for Grupo Carso, his industrial conglomerate, which are distributed annually to all employees. One tenet translates into English as follows: "Maintain austerity in prosperous times (in times when the cow is fat with milk); it accelerates corporate development and avoids the need for drastic change in times of crisis." So, for example, TelMex's net debt equals Ebitda, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, a statistic that's unheard-of in its industry, where debt is typically three times cash flow. América Móvil actually has less debt than Ebitda. "They're rabid about costs," says New York-based Citi investment research analyst Patrick Grenham. "They borrow as little as possible and very carefully."

Slim inherited his head for numbers - and his knack for bottom-fishing - from his father, Julian, who fled to Mexico in 1902 to avoid the Ottoman Empire's military draft. Julian Slim started a general store and bought commercial real estate in downtown Mexico City during the 1910 Revolution. He required his young son to record his childhood purchases in notebooks; Slim, a bit of a pack rat, keeps some of the ledgers on a shelf in his office.

Though he taught math to make money in college, Slim graduated with a degree in engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in the early 1960s. He then started a stock brokerage in Mexico City and began to acquire industrial companies he deemed bargains. He would reinvest the cash from those businesses or use it to acquire additional properties, and he named his holding company Grupo Carso ("Carso" is an amalgam of his first name and Soumaya's).

Then came the crash of the Mexican economy in 1982. The country defaulted on foreign-debt payments, investors fled Mexico, and companies traded for centavos on the peso. Slim was able to scoop up assets on the cheap. All the while, he was schooling his heirs on his investments, occasionally even seeking their counsel to test their business savvy - such as the time he asked 12-year-old Patrick if he should acquire cigarette maker Cigatam (he did). "You make it fun," Slim says. "It is one thing to listen to a father lecture. It is better to learn from experience."

The Mexican economy eventually recovered, and by the late 1980s Slim was one of the country's most successful businessmen. When the government put the state-owned telephone company, Teléfonos de México, up for sale, Slim jumped. He partnered with SBC (now AT&T (Charts, Fortune 500)) and France Télécom to buy 20% of the company in late 1990 for about $2 billion - a fair price, based on other phone companies' market values at the time. What rankled would-be competitors of TelMex (including U.S. long-distance companies such as MCI) were the terms of the privatization: Slim and company got what amounted to a seven-year guarantee of monopoly status at a time when phone companies around the world had the money - and will - to expand into new markets.

Further clouding the deal was the fact that Slim was a huge contributor to Carlos Salinas de Gortari's PRI party. In his book about Mexican politics Bordering on Chaos, author Andrés Oppenheimer describes a 1993 dinner party in which Salinas's people solicited 30 Mexican businessmen for contributions. According to Oppenheimer's account, Slim was willing to give but told the group he "wished the funds had been collected privately, rather than at a dinner, because publicity over the banquet could 'turn into a political scandal.'" Oppenheimer writes that the businessmen present pledged to contribute an average of $25 million apiece. A Slim rep declined to comment.

"He made his billions because of an extremely close and advantageous relationship with the Salinas government," says professor Grayson of William & Mary. More recently Slim has been pragmatically investing in multiple parties, a common practice among Mexico's oligarchs.

Zhang Yin article

2007-09-11T18:23:00.000-07:00

China's 'Queen of Trash' finds riches in waste paper
By David Barboza
Published: January 15, 2007
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HONG KONG: Just five years ago, Zhang Yin and her husband were driving around the United States in a used Dodge Caravan minivan, begging garbage dumps to give them their scrap paper.

She and her husband, who was trained as a dentist, had formed a company in the 1990s to collect paper for recycling and ship it to China. It was a step up from life in Hong Kong, where she had opened a paper-trading company with $3,800 to cash in on China's chronic paper shortages.

"I remember what a man in the business told me back then," Zhang Yin said. "He said, 'Waste paper is like a forest. Paper recycles itself, generation after generation.'"

Zhang took that memory all the way to the bank. As a result of her entrepreneurship, she is now richer than virtually any other woman anywhere in the world, including Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, and the chief executive of eBay, Meg Whitman. Her personal wealth is estimated at $1.5 billion or more.

Her companies take heaps of waste paper from the United States and Europe, ship it to China and recycle it into corrugated cardboard, which is then used for boxes that are packed with toys, electronics and furniture that are stamped "Made in China" and then often shipped right back across the ocean to Western consumers.

After the boxes are thrown away, the cycle starts all over again.
Late last year, Forbes magazine named Zhang the wealthiest woman in China. She may even be the richest self-made woman in the world, challenging a handful of others, like Giuliana Benetton, who started the Italian clothing company with her brothers, and Rosalia Mera, who co-founded Zara, the Spanish clothing retailer, with her former husband.

Most of the world's richest women inherited their wealth: from the Walton sisters of Wal-Mart fame to the daughters of the men who created Mars candy bars, L'Oréal cosmetics and BMW.
But not Zhang. She started out from a modest background, the daughter of a military officer. Now she dominates the world's paper trade through her giant companies, one centered in Dongguan, just outside Hong Kong, and the other based in Los Angeles.

"She's a visionary," said Herman Woo, an analyst at BNP Paribas, which helped her large paper company list shares in Hong Kong. "She doesn't mind putting a lot of money in at the beginning, to build the company."

That company, Nine Dragons Paper, is now the biggest paper maker in China. It raised nearly $500 million when it went public in Hong Kong last March.

Since then, shares of Nine Dragons have quadrupled, giving the company a market value of more than $5 billion. The Zhang family controls 72 percent of the company, which makes it one of the richest families in China.

Zhang's smaller venture, America Chung Nam, which is based in Los Angeles, is one of the world's biggest paper trading companies, with ties to recycling yards in New York, Chicago and California.

No other U.S. company sends so much material to China, in as many containers, as America Chung Nam, which was named the top U.S. exporter to China by volume for the fifth consecutive year in 2005, according to Piers Global Intelligence, which tracks import and export data.

Now, with the paper industry shifting to China, where labor and land are cheaper, Zhang and Nine Dragons are vowing to take on the world's global paper giants, like International Paper, Weyerhauser and Smurfit Stone.

"My goal is to make Nine Dragons, in three to five years, the leader in containerboards," Zhang said emphatically during a short interview in her Hong Kong office. "My desire has always been to be the leader in an industry."

Zhang rarely grants interviews, and when she does, they are brief and controlled by an army of handlers.

Zhang does not go into detail about how she made her fortune. In a society known for close ties and hidden deals between government officials and business leaders, she says simply, "I'm an honest businesswoman."

Zhang was the oldest of eight children born into a military family from northern Heilongjiang Province, near the Russian border. During the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966, her father was sent to prison, like millions of others who were branded "counterrevolutionaries" or "capitalist roaders."

When the Cultural Revolution came to a close in 1976, her father was released from prison and "rehabilitated." She went to work as an accountant.

After economic change got under way in China in the early 1980s, she moved to the southern coastal city of Shenzhen, one of the first areas in China allowed to experiment with capitalism. There she started working for a foreign-Chinese joint venture paper trading company.

In 1985, she ventured to Hong Kong, which was then still a British colony. Ng Weiting, who was her partner in Hong Kong in the 1980s, says Zhang was driven and tough and had figured out how to get the best performance out of those who worked for her.

"When her employees asked for a pay raise, she would grant it if it was reasonable," he recalled. "But when her employees made mistakes, she would criticize them severely. She made it clear when to reward and when to punish."

Analysts say Zhang's ebullient personality made her a great saleswoman and a savvy deal maker.

There were occasional threats from competitors, but being a woman was not a problem, Zhang said.

"Actually, I didn't find it difficult," she said. "I found men respected me."
After Hong Kong's paper market proved too small for her ambitions, she moved to Los Angeles in 1990 and married for the second time, to Liu Ming Chung, who was born in Taiwan, grew up in Brazil and is fluent in English.

Together, they formed America Chung Nam. At the time, China's fast- growing economy was suffering from shortages of raw materials, and the country began looking overseas for scrap metal and used paper. Zhang Yin was one of the first to sell scrap paper to China.

China's own paper products are poor quality, often made from grass, bamboo or rice stalks. Most paper made in the United States and Europe is derived from wood pulp.

America Chung Nam quickly made deals with American scrap yards and began shipping huge containers of paper back to China. The demand grew so fast that in 1995, Zhang (who also goes by her Hong Kong name, Cheung Yan) returned to China to found Nine Dragons, opening her first paper making facility in Dongguan, a major manufacturing hub in the bustling Pearl River Delta region near Hong Kong. Liu now is the chief executive; Zhang is the chairwoman.

A decade later, the company has 11 giant paper making machines, 5,300 employees, $1 billion in annual revenue and a huge new facility under construction in the country's other booming export hub, the Yangtze River Delta area near Shanghai. Reported profit last year rose 349 percent to $175 million.

Nine Dragons is now one of the fastest growing paper companies, and yet it says it cannot keep up with demand for container board, the material used to make boxes, because of the booming growth in the Chinese economy and exports.

Foreign paper companies have been slow to build a sizable manufacturing base in China, Analysts doubt they will catch up any time soon. And Chinese manufacturers have advantages. They burn cheap coal rather than clean but expensive natural gas. And they are capitalizing on less expensive labor and the newest machinery, while paper makers in the United States and Europe are often using less efficient machines from the 1970s and 1980s.

"It's very difficult for U.S. companies to get into this business now," said Woo at BNP Paribas. "I heard five or six years ago they looked at opportunities but they didn't do anything.
"Right now," Woo added, "the largest globally is Smurfit Stone. Weyerhauser is No. 2. By 2008, Nine Dragons could be No. 1."

Analysts have been nearly unanimous in their praise of Zhang, though she came under some criticism for appointing her 25-year-old son as a nonexecutive member of the Nine Dragons board of directors.

But Zhang vigorously defends the appointment, saying her son is qualified and Nine Dragons is, after all, a family company. She has a second son in high school. And her younger brother, Zhang Chang Fei, is the company's deputy chief executive.

Zhang jumped to No. 5 this year in the Forbes ranking of the wealthiest people in China, from No. 107 last year, largely because of the huge public stock listing.

She has not lost her ambition, though. Sometimes called the Queen of Trash, she doesn't disown the title. But, she said, "Some day, I'd like to be known as the queen of containerboards."

FILEFONT

2007-09-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

DM-ARCH1102_SIMON_BURK

IMAGES CAPTURED AND ARCHITECTURE

2007-09-09T06:36:00.002-07:00

Another term for action is movement, shown here is my external space characterised by signs of what i call 'still form movement'. Incorporated along with actions is change and strength where one form (the singular rectangular prism extending from the wall) houses forms petruding and extruding it.
Mixing two complex ideas from two great philosophers was a challenging process, just thinking about one makes me dizzy. Using an arrangement of cutouts and addins this space remains formal in its forms but complex in it composition.
Using a variety of light and dark textures allows for interesting contrasts and concepts within each space. In my interior space which, playings around concepts of grandure and intelligence along with change/adaptation, i have endevoured to create a dramatic and sensual experience for every visitor.

Looking at the place in time where my building was created, by viewing its place in the sky (shadows) View from within the meeting place which, uses a combination of textures between inside and outside to play on a narrative of meeting.

TEXTURES

2007-09-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

PARALLELS: NIGHTINGALE & DARWIN

2007-09-03T23:05:00.000-07:00

'People who define strength, intelligence and words cannot endure the longevity of life, for they waste themselves through feelings. But, those who use actions with the adaptive capacity of change will transcend time.'

Charles Nightingale & Florence Darwin

SPACE

2007-08-28T19:41:00.000-07:00

'It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.'
Charles Darwin

Followed by:

'I think ones feelings wastes themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions that bring results.'
Florence Nightingale

The odd one out:

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

Stephen Hawking

Storyboards

2007-08-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

The Lifelong Journal of Simon Burk

2007-08-19T07:40:00.000-07:00

In, Out and All Around Animations

2007-08-19T06:50:00.001-07:00

CHECK it: Sharing MEOW on Warehouse

2007-08-19T06:25:00.000-07:00

Morphosis 2 modeled by Simon Burk is now showing on Sketchup Warehouse for ARCH1102

2007-08-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

EXP 1, W3

2007-08-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

Piccinini noun = downfall
Duchamp verb = repositioning

duchamp noun = society
piccinini noun = downfall

EXP 1, W2

2007-07-30T23:35:00.000-07:00

Marcel Duchamp noun: society
Patricia Piccinini noun: downfall

EXP 1, W1

2007-07-23T04:10:00.000-07:00

"Nude Descending a Staircase" 1912
description: repositioning, naked, society

"Game Boys Advanced" 2003
description: settled, aged, downfall

Wing Sketches
description: soar, vague, form

semester one design fundamentals model
description: movement, delicate, wooden