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Architects: Architecture School of Southeast University, Atelier XÜK
- Area: 2222 m²
- Year: 2020
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Lead Architects: Xu Zhang, Kenan Liu
Text description provided by the architects. The site of the project is the former Xishan Farmers Market in Dingshu Town, Yixing City, with Baidang River in the south, Dingshan North Road in the east, the community internal road in the west, and the non-metal chemical machinery factory in the north. The site is long and narrow, about 300 meters along the shoreline of the Baidang River. The widest part is about 10 meters. The design strategy is to construct a fully accessible community space with various activities and recreational spaces through the organization of different building types and individual units. The single building includes a pentagonal pavilion, gallery pavilion, bridge, mahjong room, and basketball hall. Although the site is called Xishan Pocket Park, it is treated as an open community space.
The pentagonal pavilion is point-shaped, like a mark, located in the woods at the entrance of the park.
The gallery pavilion is close to the riverbank and parallel to the pedestrian path on the north side, providing a linear space for rest and water viewing.
The basketball hall was renovated from the original vegetable market shed and supporting facilities such as cafes and public toilets were added. The mahjong room is located on the south bank, which includes a mahjong room, public toilet, and semi-outdoor space.
The bridge crosses the Baidang River and connects the square in front of the basketball court with the small courtyard in front of the mahjong room. The location is located in the middle, which provides convenience for community residents to reach Pocket Park.
Individual buildings, landscape elements, existing rivers, and walls create and define public spaces of different scales and properties: squares, streets, playgrounds, woods, pools, and water platforms.
Due to years of reconstruction and expansion, the surrounding residential areas have shown mixed and complex construction systems. The use of mixed structures and materials for construction has become a strategy of new construction and reconstruction, to obtain the characteristics of the context. Individual materials are used in different ways, blurring the construction time and author of the structure. The pentagonal pavilion is a steel-wood structure with a tensile membrane roof; the gallery pavilion is a steel-concrete frame structure and a wooden structure with a blue tile roof; the main body of the bridge is a steel arch structure with a steel-concrete base; the mahjong room is a steel frame structure with a blue tile roof; The basketball hall retains its original structure, and light-weight enclosure materials, such as sunlight panels, U-shaped glass, steel wire mesh, etc., are filled into the structural frame.
Yixing belongs to the northern subtropical monsoon climate zone, with hot and humid summers. The pentagonal pavilion, gallery pavilion, mahjong room, and basketball hall use double-layer roofing, which is good for heat insulation and ventilation, reduces the adverse impact of hot and humid climate on the indoor environment and improves indoor comfort.
