Sloping Slow Street

The main issue that I wish to work with is the lack of interaction with between the Gifu Culture Center and the surrounding streets. That leads to the concept of this project which is to open up the culture centre as a part of the surrounding streetscape and simultaneously acting as a mediator between the small scales on the East and the larger scales on the West. The building is also an attempt to promote the slow life movement which aims to slow down the fast pace life in Gifu City.

Starting with the before drawing, surrounding the culture centre is the mostly offices and houses. As the Area is occupied by houses and offices and given that kogane park is the central park of the city centre which people can rest and relax, but the existing civic centre does not work well with kogane park. Hence, my intervention involves the Conversion of gccc into 3d streets and town where small houses and street can work together with the park.

Following up with the after drawing, this was the Gifu Culture Centre with my design interventions. So to break down the exact interventions, on the east wing, 4 rectangular blocks are added with each of the rectangular blocks having programme spaces targeting a specific theme of the slow life movement respectively. On the west wing, 3 levels of volumes showing 3 different streets, the retail street, the book street and the food street; with each street being shown with a different opacity of black.

Moving to my sections, this drawing shows the short section of my Gifu Culture Centre. The rationale of this drawing is to show how I demolish the original auditorium as a gesture to create the ramp that forms the main circulation of my 3d streetscape where it also forms the backbone of my complex street.

Moving on to my long section, this drawing shows how my ramp opens up to both my streets in the west and the east. Inside the machiyas on the east wing with stairs forming continuous circulation within each machiya and the street. On the west wing, there is also continuous circulation within each level. This section also shows the intricate relationship between the gccc and the urban streets where there is a distinct boundary being private and public with the gccc being private and the streets being public.

Before my intervention, the Multipurpose hall was initially one big hall, with a spiraling slope from auditorium. From this spiral slope, my street goes to the different levels of the multi-purpose hall. Focusing on the east wing, the rectangular machiyas are placed along horizontal ramps . This action creates another inner layer of relationship between the building and the street where these horizontal ramps act as a side street while the machiyas act as buildings. The Machiyas are of different sizes to respond to the scale of the small buildings on the left. Glass is used here to emphasize the opening up to the streetscape and to ensure privacy, one could use binders or curtains. One could walk along this side street and peek into the activities happening within these machiyas , just like any typical interaction of a user walking along the street and building.

Moving to my site plan, this main site plan shows the various operations I did such as the offsetting of these machiyas inwards to open up the path towards kogane park and the spatial mapping of private and public spaces of my research on the different generations of machiya onto each of my rectangular block . The hatch shows how the existing urban street connects with my building seamless from the street to the ramp. A lift is also place on north wing for disabled friendly ppl. As the north and south is my main circulation, I also decided to place the bicycle parking and shop to encourage more users to use this building as part of their daily activities. On the east wing, the programme spaces are responding to the themes of slow wear and slow education. On the west wing, each trapezium block is a retail shop, where trapezium volumes with respect to the multi purpose hall are placed sensitively within each level and firstly I populate the entire mph. Thereafter, some trapezium volumes are removed to make way for circulation(in this case cross circulation) and openings for light and views. In terms of programme, there are 4 individual retail shops, collectively forms a retail street. They can simultaneously act as individual shops but also act as a collective retail street. Hence, this shows how the gccc acts a mediator between the different scales on the east and west.

This drawing shows my level 2 floorplan, where the east wing is the book street and the west wing shows my programmes spaces of the slow education, slow house and slow food. What is unique in my project is this intimate private and public relationship not only between the side street and the machiya but also within the machiya itself as shown by the color coded programmes where the private and public spaces are segregated by glass doors and walls to maintain this segregation but keeping to the concept of opening up to the streetscape. For this example this zoom in view shows one of the machiya levels that shows the private space acting as an tea workshop for people who paid for the workshop. Just outside the room is the public space of the machiya where users can display their tea related crafts and share their cultures and experiences. People walking along this side street can also peek in to explore the tea workshop activities and enter the machiya to learn more about tea making culture. These interactions emphasizes the successfulness of Gifu Civic Culture Center acting as a slow life movement vessel to slow down the fast paced life in Gifu City.

This drawing shows my level 3 floorplan. Where the east wing is the food street, and the north wing is my floorplans for my slow house( one of the slow life movement themes), to encourage users to experience staying within a traditional machiya space.