Yiran Zhang

Each individual is a camper that inhabits the city temporarily or permanently. The project is a response to urban nomadism among young generations who are working or about to start their life in the city of Beijing in China. It is questioning the current phenomenon of over-sharing within living spaces. This is an opportunity to re-imagine the domestic life with minimalism, where individuals are able to enjoy their solitude, and at the same time be in a collective living environment that is open towards the city to socialize with each other. Just like camping--the tent is a self-contained living cell that embodies the most essential and intimate qualities, while the patterns of communal activities are influenced by the allocations of infrastructural elements such as water points, kitchen facilities and so on. Therefore, those devices are treated as key spatial elements, potentially facilitating inhabitants’ gathering.
A monumental and simple framework is proposed, composed of a series of rooms and communal spaces that face in opposite directions, incorporating landscape-like interiors. The bedroom - a cell where the individual can eat, sleep, contemplate and entertain him or herself without interruption - is articulated in a minimal way to reinforce a sense of aloneness. The gardens are kitchens, dining spaces, places to meet people and stay, with furniture and vegetation, promoting new rituals of cooking and eating together in this contemporary community. Two volumes are arranged in a mirror image inversion with a small shift, which celebrates the diagonal movements when crossing the threshold, and views are framed, gradually changing as you move through the spaces. The excessive amount of columns gives rhythm to the spaces to represent its monumentality. Along with them, several layers can be identified, constructing in-between spaces which are neither fully interior or exterior, offering possibilities for inhabitants to accommodate themselves under different climatic conditions. Also, the roughness of the building structure contrasts with the lightness and smoothness of the partitions inside. In this sense, it is monumental, and at the same time,is flexible for different iterations.

Instead of being programmatically diverse, the project lies in its simplicity, the attention towards developing the sensitivity of single life within a collective atmosphere, understanding how space could be potentially occupied and what is key to our dwelling, to finally generate the rituals for living in a contemporary community of strangers.

The project tries to re-imagine the way of living together among young people in high rise buildings without losing the possibility of staying alone by learning from the camping experience. It is a chance to think about what defines the living space from material and infrastructural perspectives.

Two volumes are arranged in a mirror image inversion with a small shift, which celebrates the diagonal movements when crossing the threshold, and views are framed, gradually changing as you move through the spaces. Winter gardens with sliding system facing the opposite direction that brings contrast scenarios. The excessive amount of columns gives rhythm to the spaces to represent its monumentality. Along with them, several layers can be identified, constructing in-between spaces that are neither fully interior nor exterior, offering possibilities for inhabitants to accommodate themselves under different climatic conditions.

As a starting point, the model on a big scale explores the structural principle with great simplicity. It constructs a monumental skeleton that is waiting for occupation, an excessive amount of columns with rhythm creates a certain quality of transparency and openness. The structure itself then is a medium that negotiates the inside and the outside, standing out from the city-scape.