Location:Songzhuang,Beijing
Completion: 2009.08
Located right next to east sixth ring road of Beijing city, Songzhuang Artist Village is undergoing a dramatic expansion of artist population and increasing demand for artists’ working and living spaces. Targetting such demand is a 20-unit artist residence located in a former outdoor storage lot and facing a fishpond.
The programmatic requirement of working and living defines the height and geometry of both volumes: height of 6m for working and 3m for living; a simple rectangular box for the studio and a complex geometry for the living space that includes a bedroom, kitchen and toilet. The living volume is plugged into working volume either on the same level or led by stair to upper level.
These 20 units are stacked up as containers on this former industrial outdoor storage lot, creating an expressive configuration and spatial quality. The interplay of volume and void, light and shadow allows artists and visitors to constantly explore and experiment with the outdoor community space, which could be the extension of art production and presentation and connect these 20 units as 20 individual showrooms on open studio days.
In other word, this complex becomes an alternative museum for living art creation and exhibition.