Community

Origin. Wudang Mountain Tourism Economic Zone in Shiyan City has been actively promoting B&B business and improving the surrounding environment of the scenic area. Yuanheguan Village is close to the entrance of the Wudang Mountain Scenic Area, and therefore was selected as a prioritized place for a pilot programme. According to the plan, the plot where the original village committee office was situated and its surroundings will be transformed into a B&B reception demonstration area, so it was very urgent to relocate and construct a new village committee office. To guarantee services for the villagers, it was essential to figure out how to build it in a short time.

The co-working hubs are driving mechanisms in the context of networking and idea developing. The collective initiatives attract young people and support their entrepreneurial spirit. With this in mind, the JUMPHUB was built in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The JUMPHUB is primarily an office for the collective JUMP, a meeting and co-working space, a place to develop ideas, to encourage creativity, to promote artistic production and cultural diffusion, a showcase of activities of JUMP and its residents. The collective brings together young professionals from different sectors: artists, designers, computer scientists, photographers, gardeners and many more.

The small Saxon community of Wülknitz is located halfway between Leipzig and Dresden in the Elbe Valley. There, ESV Lok Wülknitz e. V., the local sports and ninepin bowling club, used to practise on a ninepin bowling alley in an old barracks at the edge of the village. In 2016, the local council decreed to build a new ninepin bowling alley and made a call for tenders. The aim of the competition was to concentrate both fields of the club’s sports activities — ninepin bowling and football — in the village centre and thereby consolidate the club’s function as a social venue and haven in this rural community.

Founded on the belief that in every child is the ability to succeed and thrive in life, Big Brothers Big Sisters works to make a direct and lasting impact on the lives of children facing adversity by establishing one-to-one relationships with volunteer mentors. Supporting this mission of inclusion and social justice, the new headquarters of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Houston imagines the building as a catalyst for community engagement with a design that is visually porous, vibrant in its use of color, and filled with natural light. The project uses architecture to produce a joyful and hopeful presence in the city that can act as a model for future chapters of Big Brothers Big Sisters throughout the country.

‘De Schoor’ is a place where people can meet each other, where information about the care offered is provided and where training courses are organized. Together with the adjacent group practice, it is a first step towards the transformation of a mono-functional district into a more urban living environment.

In 2017, we were invited by the village secretary to do an overall planning and a series of architectural design of Xiaoshi Village in Pengzhou, Sichuan Province. Just like other rebuilt villages after the earthquake, XIaoshi Village is facing the same difficulty in reidentifying itself with monotonous residential buildings, simple brick-concrete architecture along the street and hollowing rural community.

The building concept responds to the needs and opportunities offered by the old neighborhood La Carolina in Cuernavaca’s downtown heart. A traditional neighborhood embedded in Cuernavaca sinuous topography with a high urban density and just a few places for recreation. The important research done by the Ministry of Culture of the state found that in that neighborhood and its surroundings there were over 25 orchestras with more than 25 members each, various soccer teams, many children and young people interested in silk-screen printing and photography as well the need for a common space where culture, recreation and sport would be a source of energy for their daily life, thus correcting social disruption among the neighborhoods as part of the historic site.