| Background

The project is located in the Balizhuang community in Chengdu, with complete surrounding facilities and a strong sense of daily life. The site, designated as a community support building, has previously accommodated a variety of businesses including elderly care services, office spaces, and street-level retail establishments. The remaining space faces issues such as poor lighting and negative space utilization.

| Spatial Planning

As a comprehensive complex serving the community, this project encompasses a farmer's market, a community canteen, a coffee shop,as well as aesthetic and educational spaces that are relatively independent. Due to the limitations of the original architecture, each space is somewhat isolated. Therefore, in this design, the client hopes to utilize common areas to connect and enhance the vitality of the entire project.

| Spatial Hierarchy

The partial removal of the external walls on the first and second floors, coupled with the excavation of an internal courtyard in the previously underutilized backyard to house a coffee shop, serves to reduce the depth of the building and enhance daylighting. By introducing landscaping into the structure, the originally enclosed building has gained a sense of public engagement. Furthermore, the courtyard serves as a connector linking the three spaces of the fresh grocery store, coffee shop, and restaurant.

| Spatial Ambiance

The fresh grocery store is densely populated with people and goods, hence the design language focuses on the arched ceilings, suspended beams, and openwork patterns at the top, which correspond to the circulation areas, vendor display fronts, and the internal spaces of the merchants. In the early stages of actual operation, the market was presented in the form of a fresh supermarket, with the original internal spaces of the merchants adjusted to display goods. Later, it was restored to a traditional wet market, and the original design form, like infrastructure, was filled with elements of urban life and vitality.

The elevation of the ground floor coffee shop is raised, creating a subtle separation from the inner courtyard and the wet market, while still sharing common spaces.

The second-floor community canteen has had its exterior walls removed, achieving a semi-outdoor dining area. The community canteen adopts the same design language as the wet market.

The aesthetic and educational spaces on the third floor are relatively independent and are accessed through an organized spatial sequence. Arranged from low to high are: a multi-purpose activity area, a tea room space, and teaching spaces that can be divided or combined as needed. The multi-purpose activity area is surrounded by stages, bookshelves, and benches, with soft lighting designed to accommodate various foreseeable community usage scenarios.

Adjacent to the multi-purpose activity area, the raised area serves as the Tea Salon and learning spaces. The elevated ground allows it to function as viewing seats for the activity area and can also be used independently, aiming to meet the diverse future needs of the community's aesthetic spaces. This creates a dynamic and static, private and open spatial relationship with the multi-purpose area.