ADS5: Camping in a High Rise
Yiran Zhang
Bachelor’s degree was obtained at the University of Nottingham's Ningbo Campus and got several scholarships throughout the academic years. Also participated in the curation and construction of pavilions for the end of the year exhibitions. Taking a year out for internship which helps me to gain view in terms of practice before RCA. 2 years MA program in RCA, the new understanding towards reactive architecture and thoughtful placemaking is invaluable to my architecture study life.
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The experience from camping is really a great inspiration, which provides a lot of nice references for the theme of inhabitation. The minimalism and close connections with the instant open environment for sure inspires me a lot. As the city is getting more and more compact, living vertically is becoming an inevitable reality, therefore, it will be interesting to explore how to bring such an ad-hoc lifestyle into tower life without compromising the quality of the space.
It is such a challenging time during the Covid-19. I spent most of my time staying alone in London, which to some extent, slowed down my pace and left more time to rethink how to live in this difficult pandemic moment, and it is nice to see how people actively transform their living space to adapt to such urgent changes, the balcony became the stage where to interact with the neighbours, the coffee table next to the window became the studio and the office, all of these interestingly are generating more thoughts towards the project and the future trend of living. I start to think about how to define the space that offers chances for appropriation, and how to present the homescape to others when living space could become a background while socialising with each other virtually all of sudden.
Under this situation, the topic of aloneness is worth discussing, it leaves more opportunities for ourselves to rethink how to get along with ourselves, identify elements that are essential to our dwelling spaces, think of the design in a minimal way, to enhance such emotional experience within architecture. As an architecture student, to push such ideas further will definitely become one of the research topics in my future career life.
Building in context
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.
