Community

Bairro da Guarda (Guarda Neighbourhood) in Perafita, Matosinhos was selected as the location of the second edition of O LUGAR DE PARTILHA (Shared Place), an autoconstruction project organized by CASA DA ARQUITECTURA, and curated by Roberto Cremascoli (COR arquitectos). This year, 14 students from several different countries (Portugal, Brazil, Italy, Australia and Mexico) participated, sharing the planning and construction of a playground with the neighbourhood residents.

The Unitarian Universalist Society facility harmonizes with its natural landscape to provide reflective spaces for worship, fellowship, religious education, and administration. The congregation’s collaborative decision-making engaged all 300 members to inform a deeply considered, conscientious design. Its organic form and fundamental qualities– sustainability, accessibility, flexibility, efficiency, and austerity—reinforce the Society’s core principles. The facility is currently on track to achieve Zero Energy Building (ZEB) certification from the International Living Future Institute (ILFI).

Not quite far from a large polluted industrial park, the project is located in a new emerging urban area with a high construction density in Dong Van town, Ha Nam province.  This is an open space for the community with its focus on cultural and artistic aspects on a periodical basis, among which coffee space is a daily activity.

The community center of Cambury is a building by and for the local low-income community of Cambury, built as a social development project. The project, started in 2004 (first part of the center) , is still active in 2018 (building of the community bakery) and is run by the local community members in the form of a cooperative and local association.

Separation of function and space
Real estate sales center is a kind of temporary architecture that can only last several months or few years at most, which is usually dismantled after houses are sold out. Even if it can be preserved in few cases, functions are completely transformed. Interior decoration of real estate sales centers is generally complicated, causing obstacles and waste of resources in the process of functional repurposement.

The newly constructed recreational center known as the “Jardin Robinson” occupies a strategic position surrounded by the wooded water-banks of the Rhone on one side and the public facilities of the Lignon district with an emblematic expression of a 1960’s concrete on the other side.

[Context of the City]
Honggutan New District is a newborn city area of Nanchang on the west bank of the Ganjiang River. Like all the other China’s burgeoning urban new districts, it is focused on building efficiency among a one-time, large-scale construction wave.

Previous stage
The proposed action aims to recover the old unitary school as a neighborhood center of Noallo de Abaixo.

The Center is presented as a new convergence and social interaction focus, directed to increase the human development of Tirrases. It is located between La Cometa Building and Las Mercedes Pedestrian Walkway, and it is a three-story building that hosts a children’s library, classrooms and workshops.