For Us By Us
Term: Fall 22
Class: Greenville: An architecture case study in rethinking repair
Instructors: Margaret Ikeda & Mark Donohue - California College of the Arts
This project is in collaboration with Vishakh Surti & Hongjie Kuang
The project works on reviving the commercial activities for the owners of technical, art, and artisans practices by
linking them to the passers through the main and 89 Street. The project aims to achieve this goal by generating spaces and methods of displaying and selling these products, especially after the dramatic financial effects caused by the Dixie Fire in August 2021.
The people of Greenville are taking crafts and repair businesses to earn their livelihood. In this sense, the project has turned its attention to providing more connected, well-facilitated workshops and spacious areas for fabricating these products. But, more importantly, building talented community members that can face any economic struggle in the future so that these areas of interest are fast-moving, connected to the people, and diverse.
+ Site Documentation
For Us By Us, came as a title for this project to shed light on the comprehensive systems that work together in recovering business owners and community members by connecting the community resources within building systems.
The Ground floor serves as an open commercial area with multiple spaces that support the business owners. In addition, the structure of the spaces allows for various events to occur. These programs vary from the public market, thrift stores, woodshops, and art studios ending with the loading zone and storage area.
+ Structure:
Our structural system beautifully allows us to create a courtyard space in the center which is visually connected to all spaces, Also allowing natural ventilation and light to all the programmatic space.
+ Program:
We designed all the community commercial shops on the ground floor, connecting the street and courtyard with a ramp that takes the visitors to the top floors in a continuous loop of ramp that starts from the street to the top of the structure and never hits a dead end.
Physical model showing the initial proposal before the Greenville community review.