PORO-CITY
Inserting A New System Of Interconnected Open Spaces
A majority of college graduates are confronted with housing difficulties because of the low income. Their salaries can hardly afford the high house rent in most part of the city. This project focuses on the heated problem in today's society, meanwhile, deals with the challenge of the urban village. Public space deficiency, monotonous program and chaotic circulation organization are all thorny problems of the site.
Instead of a complete reconstruction, the project keeps the original urban fabric of the site as much as possible and inserts a system of connected public areas. In-between areas among architecture islands are key factors in designing a porous community and allowing the city to better operate in an interconnected mode, which need efficient organizations.
With so many colleges around the site, it preferably responds to the common social issue. Meanwhile, urban villages remain as a kind of leftover space in contemporary society. Combining the two sides while trying to solve the two heated social problems are challenging but worthwhile.
It is a very typical urban village with severe insufficient public spaces. The high density of monotonous housing programs cannot attract people anymore, resulting in a deserted condition of buildings.
The project tries to keep the general building fabric- the 'site memory' to avoid large-scale reconstruction. Removing some of the blocks and inserting public voids reduce the overall building density. A wooden boardwalk passes through the site, connecting all large public spaces and stretching out branches to create a more permeable community. Originally people can only access here from two directions but now they have more choices to participate in.
Keeping appropriate amount of greenery, adding more accesses to the city and distributing various programs will attract more people to come. Abundant spatial layers will bring about different community activities.
Three different scales of public spaces are placed along the path, which can satisfy people's diverse demands. With the dynamic path going through the whole site, it definitely transforms the originally highly dense fabric into a permeable and porous environment.
The boardwalk passes through blocks in different levels, becoming a kind of symbol of the site. It reconnects buildings, making originally separate identities link to each other again to inspire more interactions.
Based on original building organization and fabric, it adds more connected platforms and public areas, making more community activities possible. Proper acupuncture strategy creates a more invigorated and dynamic space system.
