My current condition
My name is Shiwei Wang. I come from Shenyang, the north of China. I major in architecture. I like drawing, watercolor, painting, or just drawing. Photography is also my hobbies. I always am proud of my artwork when others praise it. The drawing included is a hat design. I drew a series of scenes when wearing my hat.
There are two characters in my first name. Shi means ten in Chinese. My birthday is December 10th, Shi also stands for the date that I come to the world. It is an important date for my family, so they put Shi into my name. Wei means one of the 12 two-hour periods of the day. It’s the eighth period in Chinese culture. Thus Wei stands the period when I am born. I think my name is unusual for its really simple. It only has 11 strokes and I can write it when I was in kindergarten. And it is really easy to pronounce, for I usually ask my American friend call me Shiwei which is not hard for them.
My past story
My old school is National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, Taiwan. For my first year, I study in Transportation and Communication Management, which focuses on the management of passenger and cargo flowing. And this major cannot excite my enthusiasm. And then I found my interest in other fields and transferred to architecture. However, some crisis happened sooner or later. My previous university cannot fill my desire, so I transfer to OSU. In 2018, I was involved in a Winter Vacation Architecture Design Competition about the future of the Taipei Olympics. In this competition, we imagined how to respond to global climate change and sea level rising by designing new architecture. This project won second place and scholarships for me. The splendid architectural design experience has helped me to gain a deep understanding of estimating the feasibility of certain architectural plans and designs and stimulated me to lean further.
Those two photos were taken in Tunpu, Guizhou. I used to be a volunteer there. We helped repair and reconstruct the roof wall and road. Through this activity, I thought about many things. For example, nowadays, with the rise of modernism, architects designed modern architecture with distinctive colors of rationalism and radicalism to adapt to the conditions of industrialization. However, the mass reproduction of modern rural areas makes the new type of rural houses in China become the product of assembly lines and lose their original regional characteristics. Monotony is boring, and design may need to switch back to the original idea. As for me, the tourists’ quick observation is so boring. Only through the working camp mode did I truly understand the structure of ancient buildings and master the process and mode of traditional Chinese carpentry.
My future plan
I yearn for receiving more professional training in order to deal with more complicated situations that will occur in my future career life. OSU is one of America’s leading institutions in architectural education with many excellent students, nationally and internationally accomplished faculty, and renowned alumni. It will certainly fulfill my desire to deeply understanding the processes in planning, designing, and construction. In relation to my career goal, with the upcoming undergraduate level education integrated into my previous learning and professional background, I feel I will ultimately realize my goal of conducting extraordinary designs in China with serious reflection on functional, technical, social, environmental, and aesthetic considerations.