Activity Center for Old People

This is the final project of my studio course. The site I chose is a square in front of the cultural hall of Xianbei Village. This village is one of the villages that we visited this semester. I like this village a lot because I think it has largely retained the original style and cultural customs of the village. So I went there several times and finally chose this place as my site.

Site Mapping

The site is an empty square in front of the cultural hall of Xianbei village. It is covered with a steel roof. As it is shown in the site plan, the red dot line represents the outline of the roof. The roof is curved. The highest part of the roof is about 6.3 meters, and the lowest part of the roof is about 5.8 meters. So I wondered whether I could build something between the roof and the ground. I think so because, according to the interviewing of villagers, they think there is not enough space for them to have more activity.

Site Plan

According to the observation, I found that old people like playing Majiang, chess and chatting with each other. But there are only a few tables and room for them. This led to some old people having to stand by and watch others playing. So I would like to build more space above the ground for them. As you can see from the second-floor plan, the project consisted of several rooms and bridges to connect them.

Ground Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

To make the whole project more dynamic, I also put the different rooms on different levels. Therefore, all of the bridges become ramps. There is a middle tower that extends beyond the roof to create a landmark for my project.

Section

The whole project is suspended on the roof. Therefore, in order to strengthen the structure of the roof, I added four triangular steel beams to the existing steel beams. As shown in the drawing below, the red lines represent the existing beams and the thicker black ones I added later.

Ceiling Plan

This is the elevation of the project. I choose wood and steel as materials for my project. I use wood for the walls of the rooms because wood is renewable and environment-friendly material. I chose steel for bridges and rails because the roof structure is steel. in that case, the style of the project and the roof structure will be consistent.

Elevation

Interior Collage

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