City within City - The site is an Urban Village in Shenzhen, a settlement that used to be an indigenous village and is going through its own urbanization, alongside that of Shenzhen. It is an urbanization process initiated by the villagers without planners and architects.
The rapid expansion and densification of city creates a typical Shenzhen phenomenon where the peripheries of the Urban Villages are walled off by high rise towers.
A cluster of 35 handshake towers in this village is subject to a city makeover plan. The initial design brief was to upgrade the facades to make the cluster less of an eyesore. But there are so many interesting scenarios thinkable for the future of those blocks; a façade makeover is the last thing they deserve.
We came up with an alternative proposal to fundamentally change the negative image of the handshake towers into a positive message.
Alternative Proposal: Strategy & Program
-No façade make-over, create a housing community
-Connect rather than to treat the 35 towers as isolated upgrades
-Ground floor: shops to activate the alleys
-Upper floors: affordable housing
Maze of Alleys
-Bring hierarchy to the disorienting maze of 16 alleys in- between the towers,
from public to semi public to private
3D Community
-Towers are inter-connected by a network of sky-corridors + 7 elevators
Communal Spaces
-Communal spaces serving 504 households, 900 tenants
Color coding as way-finding system
-The 35 towers are divided into 7 circulation clusters, each color-coded for a clear way-finding.
All the information about how to enter the 2020 WAN Awards is here.
We are very happy to offer support so please don’t hesitate to email Georgia, WAN Awards Event Coordinator with any questions at Georgia.Baily@haymarket.com.
Last year more than 40 countries took part in the WAN Awards with strong showings from Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific. And we saw some truly outstanding projects, take a look at the winners from last year here.