Huopu Zhang

Huopu Zhang

张霍普

PUBLICATIONS

Prism XR - A Curated Exhibition Experience in Virtual Reality with Peer Annotation Features and Virtual Guides for Art and Archaeology Classes

H. Zhang, arXiv, 2024

The Prism XR project is a curated exhibition experience in virtual reality (VR) for art and archaeology education with features designed for the enhancement of interactivity and collaborative learning. The project integrates peer annotations and a virtual exhibition guide to augment educational experiences. The peer annotation features are intended for facilitating visitor critiques and comments pivotal in fostering a dialog between the curator and the audience and a dialogue between the visitors in art and archaeology education, which are demonstrated to have positive impacts on the learning motivations and learning outcomes. The virtual exhibition guide is intended to address the issue of isolation in the virtual exhibition space and to increase interactivity in the virtual curatorial experiences.

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Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo: The Allegorical Shift in Polarity, Frontality and The Inner Body of a Renovation Project

H. Zhang, Oblique: Critical Conservation (OBL/QUE) Vol. 2, 2018

In 1940, Walter Benjamin wrote in his essay Über den Begriff der Geschichte about his impression of the Angel of History, whose face is turned towards the past and who sees one single catastrophe where we see the appearance of a chain of events. With such a notion, Benjamin not only conveys to us his idea of the irresistible force of progression, but also provides us with an angle on history that is unlike the one most of us are familiar with. Instead of viewing history as linear, as scholars in the classical model of historicism do, Benjamin’s perspective is shifted ninety degrees from the classical viewing plane. In so doing, he shows that what we see in history can be rendered as something else. Moreover, the very move of shifting the viewing angle is itself allegorical.

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Lattice Wall

H. Zhang, Brick: Thick/Thin, 2017

Lattice Wall explores a construction methodology used in traditional masonry construction. This methodology uses bricks as stacked frame-like elements that are then filled to provide static integrity. The project began as an exploration into an unorthodox technique of laying bricks that creates varying internal spaces and pockets within the wall, especially under a gravitation-free circumstance. The wall gradually deconstructs the brick’s inherent materiality as it shifts from solid to void.

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A Dialogue between the Local and the Global

H. Zhang, Shanghai Regeneration: Five Paradigms, 2017

Cities, as extensive entities that comprise a large amount of parts of varied scales and diverse natures, when viewed through scopes of different dimensions, provide us with different focal points into the matters of urban momentum and the socioeconomics factors that lie beneath them. All these various scopes can actually constitute a continuous spectrum of views that are related to all layers of the elements and issues of interest within a city, and, in return, each of them can be taken from such a spectrum to address a certain subject that is best represented in such a scale. In particular, when looking in to the case of the Biyun neighborhoods in relation to their context, there are two scopes that stand far from each other on the spectrum that are highly representative and useful - the city as a whole, which is equivalent here to the city of Shanghai, and the scale of a building block, which can be any one of the blocks lying within the boundary of Biyun.

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