City Lounge of Zhongshan Road / The Design Institute of Landscape and Architecture China Academy of Art
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The City Lounge is located on Zhongshan Road, the core area of the old city of Jiaxing. The site is sandwiched among buildings of different ages and is a typical urban debris space. The project is part of the old town remodeling plan of Jiaxing and is different from the large-scale overall renewal. It introduces Jane Jacobs’ “street eye” concept into the debris space reconstruction, trying to apply the “organ style” point of renewal to arouse the public’s passion for the complex and diverse life in the old city.
For this site, the most obvious characteristics are disorder, fuzzy boundaries, and four lush camphor trees. The objective of the project is to re-use the site to create an active community activity space and meet the requirements of public restrooms. The building intervenes in the complex environment of the site with the entry point of “A good tree is a good shelter”. On the irregular site, three yards are built to retain four camphor trees to limit the boundary, and the entire roof is lying under the shade of the tree.
Surrounding the architectural space and courtyard, it sets a three-dimensional streamline composed of stairs and ramps to attract the public to participate in it. On the side along the street, it uses heavy wood grain concrete and light metal mesh to meet the public’s sight. When the visitor approaches, the concrete-rolled entrance arouses the curiosity of the visitor to explore and guides the visitor into the preset walking route.
After passing the surrounding ramps and stairs, the roof terrace that you enter is the first space for staying, where you can enjoy the safety and comfort of the cool shade under the trees, overlooking the busy traffic of Zhongshan Road outside the wall. Entering the courtyard on the north side, the long ramp is a favorite place for children in the nearby community. The main view of the courtyard adopts a shallow water scene to ensure the safety of children when they play.
The passage from below the ramp into the main building can be used as a functional venue for small-scale publicity in the community. The main body of the building is an open stepped reading space, with a whole book wall and reading platforms of different elevations. As the end or starting point of the entire three-dimensional streamline, the reading space combines with the roof to form a triangle as a constituent element, which is a metaphor for “Jiaxing rice dumplings” and shows certain regional characteristics.
