Community Support Centre for Single Parent Families
Project 2 calls for the design of a COMMUNITY SUPPORT CENTRE FOR SINGLE-PARENT FAMILIES within an urban park environment. To provide full design proposals incorporating findings from precedent study and site analysis. To generate concepts/narratives that respond to context and community-related programmes and explore design solutions that reduce environmental impact utilizing clustered spatial typology and passive design strategies. The design should contribute to and merge harmoniously with the context and provide interesting spatial experience for the users through sensitive and thoughtful architectural intervention.
Project 2A: Site Analysis Presentation
The proposed Leisure and Recreational centre will be on two different sites located on sites adjacent to the Taman D.R Seenivasagam in Ipoh, a large urban park dating from the early 1950’s.
Chosen site: Site B, along Jalan Raja Ashman Shah, Taman Fairpark, Ipoh Perak (opposite Nasi Kandar Pelita Taman Fairpark)
Usage :COMMUNITY SUPPORT CENTRE FOR SINGLE-PARENT FAMILIES
Building Siting :Setbacks as per the agreed decision by tutors for each site.
PROPERTY LOT AREA.
Building Height :2 - 3 Storeys in cluster arrangement.
Approx. Floor Area :Approximately 900 sqm (not including outdoor spaces)
Garbage
Why Garbage? Single parents has always has this stigma stuck to them; that they are unwanted, broken or something negatively unconventional towards the ideal of having a common dual home. Garbage too refers back towards Site B, Taman Fairpark as it is taken for granted by locals, visitors & residents nearby. Trash is thrown without forethought & the maintenance there is poor.
The site somehow appears as if they cease to exist or to be utilised fully again. For a solution towards this thought, we wanted to give life again towards single parents, their households & site B towards what was once thought to have their story of their book ended.
Project 2B: Concept Development (Interim)
The objectives of this project are as follow:
1. To explore community support programs for disenfranchised families and their relationship to architecture.
2. To develop a multi-layered understanding of contextual issues in order to inform design.
3. To develop the student’s ability to weave together sustainable environmental strategies and user and programmatic needs into poetic architectural spaces.
4. To emphasize on the planning of blocks together with in-between outdoor spaces that together form the building cluster.
The design for the Community Support Centre must take into consideration the activities and social life already existing on site, and contribute in meaningful ways to its context. The design must be based on a multi-layered understanding of contextual issues, woven together with sustainable environmental strategies and user and programmatic needs into poetic architectural spaces.
Project 2C: Final Presentation and Review
two of A kind
A single parent holding his/her child to walk down the road
Inspired by crossroads, INTERSECTION means decision making, to go left or right. Single parent families are to play two roles at once, to carry the responsibility of taking care of the family with no idea what is coming ahead. Going through the process of uncertainty and unravel what is ahead in the future in this painful change
The main concern of single parents are their own children, their life and future depends on them. Children are who parents shaped them to be, who would be walking by their side, step by step as children grow up. Children could be affected heavily emotionally, children witnesses parent’s character Separation in a relationship means changing every aspect in life, something that does not need to be cared suddenly becomes needy.Unemployed, battling mortgage, getting a new title or label, and earning living expenses are the common challenges in the community of single parent families.
Known as ‘broken families’, single parents doubt of their view on themselves, whether they could support the family and the discomfort comments from community. Single parent families undergoing hardships and challenges to face the different phase of life. It is a turning point or crossover point that they feared to go across fearing what is ahead is a failure.
Design Approach
FLEXIBILITY + PLANES + CROSS OVER
Vertical planes sit on top of horizontal planes creating a volume below. Looks floating or cantilevered gives people below a sense of presence and interaction is encouraged. Creating courtyards in between and incorporating the concept of rising from below
Vertical and horizontal axis Cutting through the site
- By creating horizontal axis surrounding the site - Inspired by five-foot walkways of shophouses in Ipoh
Growing with river
Accurately sits beside the riverbank and creates a harmonious effect with the river without making any contrasting changes
Five points of architecture - Le Corbusier
- The Pilotis Raised from ground allowing more space
- The Flat Roof
- Open Plan; Flexible planning of spaces
- Ribbon Windows
- Free Façade
THE CHAIN OF THOUGHT
The project is born through the aggregation of phases or distinct elements placed side by side in balance, spatially coherent with the nature and the use of the spaces, which, assembled, constitute the project in its whole. A complex that focuses its attention on the topography of the place, on its integration in the landscape, on its double perception (from the outside and from the inside), and that wants to be a place for single parent families. A building both fast and slow, silent and sonorous, technological and poetic
THE LANDSCAPE WITHIN THE LANDSCAPE
To draw the landscape within the landscape, introducing a new public space, a catalyst for activities, capable of overturning the perceptive modalities of the area that are, to date, the movement of the cars, their speed and the entertainment. It is necessary to turn one’s gaze, to walk away from the area, to observe it from the different points of view of its “geography” in order to understand its role and soul within the natural balance of nature which becomes landscape. The site of Taman Fairpark lies next to the Senam river, while behind it stands the profile of the community, to engage with the public. The approach of horizontal and vertical plane set its ambiguous simplicity, but complicated, the presence of tall treees, the profile of the sloping down river, the community at the shoplots. These are the contemplative elements of the landscape’s perception. It is to these that the project refers itself, now in an intimate way, now collective, now representative and functional, now recognizable and simple.
