Xian Living House - The Project Matrix 3

June 30, 2019

Architectural Precedent

Xian (A) Living house – Penda Architecture

Key concept

Xian is an old city with a long history in the middle of China, and this city has a typical feature of traditional Chinese old town which is having a moat at the outside of town. Draw-bridge is the only way to connect the outside area. Xian Living house is a public space for events. Moreover, at the middle of this building, this project applied fold-able elements for separating people or providing more flexible space to conduct more types of activities. For the facade of this design, it contains the traditional elements, a moats and draw-bridges. All doors can be fold down like draw-bridge to connect the surrounding of this building. Then getting into the interior of Xian Living house, the inside space is divided into three areas by fold-able wooden boards. The main event area is at the middle, and other two areas will be used as restaurant or bar, or some places for rest. Also the folding boards can combine those three areas into one space if required.

Fundamentally, flexible space is one of the most important elements, and this project implements the concept of space flexibility very well. Ruth used to mention that for public building like museums and gallery, what elements used in a design can reflect an architect’s ambition, showing flexible interior spaces is better than defining a gallery. (Ruth R, 2007) The flexible inside space provides more possibilities for building itself. At the same time, the public will have more functions, so that the building can be utilized more efficiently. To some extent, this is a way to economize resources, such as space and land resources.

Selected design element

For this architectural precedent, the flexible use of the interior of the building is the part which is chosen to make a physical model this time. Because this is a small individual building, the external walls of this building will be made as well. But the point of this physical model is those movable planks in the middle. Each part of this model is simple, and the difficult part is relatively the connection between the movable plank and the fixed board. In order to make the folding board to rotate, there should be a metal shaft at the bottom of the folding board, and the shaft is connected to the nearby fixed board. At the same time, for the movable staircase near the main entrance, a support point will be installed opposite for each folding board in order to make this stairs more stable in use.

How is the key concept reflected in the design studio?

For public building learning, flexible interior space is a proposition for a long-term research, so if I choose urban condition studio in the future or have a chance to participate in a large-scale public building design at work, making this case will be a good learning opportunity. If a convention center, museum or art gallery can have a lot of flexible internal use space, then the exhibition area and the internal streamlines of the area can be changed. This change is not just adding or decreasing exhibition boards, this is about the entire building itself has changed. It can add more temporary rooms at any time, or it also can be combined with a variety of small spaces into a large connected area for suiting any exhibition requirements. And because the museum, art gallery and the convention center have a certain speciality, thus they have some features that other buildings may not have at the beginning of design, such as natural lighting control and internal sound insulation. The flexible interior can give them more functions which are not about exhibitions. The function defines the building, the modern art gallery can have more features, making it not just a traditional exhibition architecture.

Geometrical description of the shape.

For this building, it is small building, and its façade and inside folding boards a key point of this design. Therefore, the whole building will be made out, and based on its plans and elevations, 1:100 this size is the most approximate. And the real dimension will show on plans at the end of this paragraph. In this physical model, all folding boards will use 3d print, and the original metal shaft will be placed by 3d print material. Then other parts will use plywood. All laser cutting part will be finished at the beginning, and all moveable boards will be inserted in their specific positions after all the fixed structures completed.