缝隙之间 / Between Crevices: CAFA Student Center

This is an architecture school work done in my sophomore year in undergrad. This project allows students to free their creations on how to deal with the relationship between nature and architecture on the big lawn in CAFA.

Traffic Streamlines, the thicker the more important

Greening

The site lawn is in the center of CAFA’s campus. As we can see from the map, the main  building, the small theater and the playground are surrounding the lawn. For CAFA student, the lawn is an important place for party and relax, especially during the annual graduation ceremony. Also there are some kinds of trees around this area, the building cannot destroy them.

FIVE FUNCTIONS: Main Transportation Route / Place for Annual Flea Markets / Place of Assembly (Honors Day and Graduation) / Outdoor Activities / Camping and Relaxing

Then I did 10 models that I’m showing above on how to deal with this site in order to achieve my goals, such as ‘Bridge’, ‘Island’, etc. Finally, under teacher’s advices, I decided to use the concept as ‘Crevices’, which is an underground architecture on the site.

Original concept models made by clay

Developed models showing the interior space

As for the function, I attempted to arrange functions that we didn’t have in campus now. I hope that a place for gathering will be the center of the space so that this lawn can still be a good place for holding events or activities. All I want is trying my best to protect the original looking and functions of this site. The built-up area is around 900m2.

Through these models, I was presently surprised that light from crevices created a good atmosphere, which inspired me. Light can also have functions in the space, for example, it can lead people to places they want to go, especially in underground spaces where people always lost their directions.

All Crevices

Sunken Gardens

Entrances

Corridors

Narrow Sunken Landscape

Skylight

The width of each crevice depends on their functions. The widest crevice are sunken gardens, next are entrances, landscape, corridors and skylights. Now, each crevice has their meanings in this space.

We can see obviously that light takes an important role in spatial atmosphere. What I find more is that crevices can connect people in vertical dimension as well, which means that people can have eye contact through those crevices.