Location: Guangzhou, China.

Architect: Fei Architects.

The project is designed for seven “slash youths” who are engaged in various industries and require high social exposure. The building serves as a mingled space for both public and private life, covering work, habitation, news conference, exhibition, business, and social gathering. The aim is to usher in a brand new urban lifestyle that is different from the commuter’s routine followed by most of their peers. The units are equipped with various complex or mingled function spaces, and the hierarchy and traditional definition of space need to be broken. The sitting room can be both a studio and a display room, and the bathtub can serve as a study for reading and resting or a sand pool for kids to play. The building has shared front gardens and backyards for every two units, and there are open space areas designated along the ambiguous border between public and private. The residents can see how their neighbors create their art pieces or make their handicraft works through the windows or on the balconies of their homes. The open space rooftop offers another venue for big gatherings among more family members or visitors. The renovated building is more like the public parlor of a large community in the context of the whole Zi Ni Tang Park. The design integrates private daily life and public activities, making it a space container with cohesive power. The building’s inward connection and outward exhibition approach to space displays the work and life of the “slash youths” and incorporates the industrial heritage site and natural scene to make it an integral whole for exhibition. Overall, the project aims to create a vertical borderless community that reinforces social connections and realizes compound use of space. The building’s flexible border allows for mutual infiltration between private and public space, further illustrating the potential differentiation of the vocational identities of “slash youths.”

Photo credit: ZHENG Qingling.