Qingpu Youth Center is
located in new town of eastern Qingpu. Compared with the old town, the new town
schemes with a large-scale structure of straight roads in high availability.
Due to unified and overly rigid planning controls, the distance between
buildings and roads shows monotony and alienation. Scale change derives from transformation
in traffic patterns and population growth, while architectural style is
affected by modern urban culture.
In main roads of Qingpu new
town, the humanizing small-scale spaces of traditional Jiangnan towns are
basically disappeared. But once entering the secondary public space, you can
still be connected with memories about Jiangnan, such as the space of Beijing Garden,
the river near the south of administration collage, or along Huaqing Road,
Xiayang village which has not been demolished yet and its ponds. etc, that
prompts a possibilities for building humanizing small-scale public space under
the large-scale city.
Qingpu Youth Center decompose
spaces with different functions according to their exact characteristics,
turning them into relatively small-scale units and organizes them all together by
outer spaces, such as courtyards, squares, streets, etc, finally making a aggregation
of building units. Youth activities among spaces- the link between spaces with
different functions, aimless wandering and random discovery - just as in a
small city, which is a response for the increasingly larger-scale city in the
process of urbanization in suburbs. We hope the humanizing small-scale space
could still be created under the premise, and memories of traditional towns
could be rebuilt.
In the traditional living
space in south Yangtze River, external space are equal treated with the
internal space, or even more important. This project obeys the tradition, and the
humanizing and interesting external space excellently corresponds to
characteristics of teenagers’ personalities and activities.
A building can also be a
small city.