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Team 4 China Town Housing
To design a housing complex with 325 units, community center, retail and gymnasium in Elysian Park almost makes it an urban setting. The site is located on either sides of Broadway from which one is hill side and the other is flat side. Taking site into consideration there is a lot of history connected to it. On flat side of the site, there are railway tracks running which have not been in use. The views from the site are amazing. Being on the very top of the hill side one can visualize the tall buildings of down town L.A. Also while standing in middle of the site, one seems to be traped with branches of trees. The feeling experienced while standing on the site and viewing became the insipiration of the overall concept of the design.
Building housing unit on the hillside of Elysian Park might get the neighbourhood worried and angry. Thus the most of the housing units are placed on the flat side and park on the street frontage remains untouched. Park on the street frontage remains untouched. The idea was to extend the park to the dead flat side with no irregation. The idea of branching become one of the main idea while designing. The site is surrounded with nature branching out as well as modern techology branching. L.A being the original city has many different ethnicity of people living. Going further on Braodway towards down town one passes through china town while before one enters the site one goes through the latino community. People have started to realize the existance of each other and adjust themselves of living with each other. Taking that concept as an idea wanted to make the industrial flat site realize the existance of the park and wanted it to respect the park site.
Considering all the issues mentioned before, the ratio of housing units is divided in such a way that most of the housing units, community center and the retail is placed on the industrial site. The park remains the way it is except some housing units are placed in the center. This will have rhe neighbourhood feel comfortable with the development of buildings. Dealing with so many housing units the circulation becomes the spine of the body and the programme behaves likes the parts of the body branching out from the spine. Again as mentioned before that the view from the site was so inspiring, that we also wanted the people living over there experience it. Thus the housing units are arranged in the form of cluster, but more than going higher it trends to spread out creating roof terraces and platforms. The functional hallway which behaves as an main circulation through out all housing units becomes a place for people to experience the space and not trapped within the houses. The retail is located at the street frontage which becomes convienient for the whole community to use it even the neighbours. The community center is sandwiched between the housing units and retail, giving privacy for the meeting rooms as well as make it easy accessesable. The Gymnasium with a pool is hidden in a corner surrounded with housing units. The reason behind it is that it should serve only people living in those housing units and not outsiders. With so many people using the pool maintance becomes a very big issue.
In order to read the concept well from the design, the structure behaves as a prime tool. The structure is very well exposed from the buildings and the main circulation seems to be held with a whole continous circulation. Also the strucure creates shade and shadow for roof terraces. At some point it turns into ornamental. The feeling of openess, respecting one other and experiencing the nature was our goal for the design. We achieve that by providing spaces within each houses and creating roof terraces to enjoy the californian weather.
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