Community

Welfare develops Community, and Community develops Welfare. Built on a hilltop-looking Mt. Fuji, this is a group home for people with intellectual disabilities, under a big umbrella where everyone in the area can easily gather.  The operator is trying to make a new welfare facility that is deeply rooted in the local community, by operating this not only as a group home, but also as a children’s cafeteria, a meeting place for senior clubs, and an evacuation place.  To that end, architecture sought a way of building that would foster connections with the surrounding area beyond the site boundaries.  

Bi-cultural spirit: The convention center that turned its back on the typical ‘big box’ – In a plane flying over the broad Rakaia River on the approach to Christchurch, Woods Bagot architect Bruno Mendes was struck by an idea. It was 2014 and Mendes was traveling to a workshop early in the design of the building. Seizing the opportunity to photograph the distinctive braided riverbed seeded a prescient and crucial design idea.

Ficus Alto expresses the need for a space of convergence and exploration for new artists from satellite communities, where food, art, and music can foster shared experiences.

 Walirumana Ethno Educational and Entrepreneurship Center is located 20 kilometers north of Uribia, established on the side of the road that leads to Puerto Colombia, in the department of La Guajira. The socio-environmental conditions in which many of these Wayuu communities live are complex. The desert that extends throughout this region to Venezuelan territory is a determining factor that has impeded the normal development of this native culture. The difficulty to generate an economy of production and consumption, the lack of infrastructure to communicate and provide basic services, added to other factors, has generated very difficult living conditions. The ethnoeducation and entrepreneurship centers materialize the three pillars of the foundation in charge of the project, Proyecto Guajira. Education, development, and basic social assistance are essential to generate a real change, and under this premise, an architecture model is proposed that aims to impact various communities in the upper Guajira by providing adequate space for these activities.

Amiens’s town hall wants to construct a new building for the ALCO non-profit organization. ALCO is a community-based association that dedicates to supporting precarious families in need of cohesion and empowerment. It provides the community with a multiplicity of activities from educational media, plastic art, theater, and poetry, to social mediation in a multiethnic neighborhood.

This project is aimed at renovating a historic site into a community center for a residential complex. The main goals are to remove the sense of secrecy and confidentiality associated with the old KMT facility, to establish a feeling of openness, but still maintain a level of control and enclosure. Using the area’s abundance of trees, grass and plants, we also decided that we would synergize the modern, open architecture with the green nature around it. Therefore, trees and bushes of all sizes are dispersed throughout the complex.