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#TPO

Younghyun Ahn, Youngseo Kim, Yejin Choi
South Korea

A Study on the community Space in Urban Residential Alley
#Time #Place #Occasion #Rabbit hole #Sequence #Urdan Livingroom #Networked Individualism
Alice in Wonderland follows a rabbit with a watch into an earthenware hole and encounters many unexpected things. If we go into the rabbit hole like this, we'll run into something that needs time that we didn't expect.
Now, that the COVID-19 is over, we are in the era of "Networked Individualism." The need for bonds with people disappeared, and space became more personalized. With the development of information and communication technology,value of individual and ability are highlighted, and a new social relations system centered on the individual has emerged. In a society where everything is shared, the functional boundaries of urban space have faded, and the scene of handling business at home or enjoying OTT at home instead of movie theaters has become everyday. Individual lifestyles are constantly being diversified and subdivided. The boundaries between Work, Play, and Life are becoming blurred.How should cities respond to these changes?The failure of the Flexible Space, which was left empty in the hope that various acts of individuals would occur in the design of public spaces, has been demonstrated by the Pendemic. From now on, a truly meaningful and flexible space will be required, which will continue to change depending on the way citizens occupy the urban space.
It is an alleyway regeneration plan to control the movement and sequence so that our daily activities can be a journey. We always live between Private Space - Public Space, but in that sense, our lives and housing are a series of processes that exist in the "Path" or "Between." If housing exists in a certain process, it is possible to improve the quality of housing through various choices and architectural intervention.
In a dwelling, the process consists of the Experience of Sequence consisting of Sence+Time, but the concept of time can be seen as the flow of movement through Path. These areas of uncertainty have the inherent potential for various event behaviors and relationships to occur. Therefore, we planned to insert various architectural devices based on Path so that various forms of social communication and coexistence can occur.
As a result, I would like to propose "Urban Living room" can be experienced as a "Journey" through physical adjustment of Path and various selective experiences.
The Rabbit Hole in our daily lives is an alley. The alleyways are narrow roads leading from the main street and connecting the town, and they are variable and disorderly. When you can't predict what's in front of you, the alley is very attractive. It is necessary to try to revive an environment where daily interaction, mixing of diversity, and constant interaction with special and new things can occur.
If you want to remember something, you have to be able to easily fold and stay in your daily life. People will naturally remember and share that their place to stay is a place that contains the past. An identity that distinguishes a unique place from other places, including perceptions, behaviors, and psychological factors for all elements of a place. It must contain a sense of place that begins with the experience of forming a sense of unity between places through constant interaction between humans and the environment.
Itaewon, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, is one of the most popular areas in Seoul with a high percentage of foreigners. Most of the terrain consists of steep slopes, and it is positioned as a representative of the residential areas of the mountain village. Most of Itaewon is formed as a residential area, mainly single-family houses, low-rise apartment houses, and commercial facilities. However, the environment of most of these residential areas is poor due to slopes and narrow alleys, making it inconvenient to use public transportation. Itaewon has been out of the development trend due to its geographical characteristics, and relatively many of its past alleys remain. As a result, the shape of the alley remains, but it is also a place where the problems of the alley are clearly revealed in urban residential areas due to changes in the paradigm of life.
Site is a residential area surrounded by a three-story apartment complex, and most of the residential buildings are detached houses on the first and second floors within 45m². In the old city center of Seoul, the area outside the site is 12m and 8m wide, but most of the roads inside the residential complex are about 3m wide, forming a narrow alley.The status of site is that a 12-meter steep slope 50m alley is formed in the center of site, starting with a new building, a neighborhood living facility. The flow of people continues through the residents and the target area.
The peculiarity of the site is that the architectural elements of the DIY concept created by residents themselves are scattered everywhere, which can be found in slums and self-produced shantytown. This is seen as an effort to improve the quality of life and the lack of living space in an undeveloped and backward environment, and these elements are differentiated from the new theme in the alley, which remains a landscape in the alley. The meaning of the natural elements may be a national wealth situation that occurs only in the target area, but on the other hand, it may be a spontaneous move to revive the meaning of the past alley, as it shows the need for modern city dwellings or the past.
In proposing alley space as a Community Space, the important goal is to improve poor residential complexes and increase communication opportunities among alley residents while maintaining alleyways from the existing land.
In the past, alleys were not roads, but Fields. Many architectural elements such as telephone poles, walls, stairs, and gates were used as play elements for street activities, and the walls were used as bulletin boards for residents' gatherings. Thus, the alley itself was a garden, a square, a playground, and a festival site.
The role of alleyways in modern urban housing complexes is becoming more and more unified. The alleyways could no longer incorporate many acts of the past, and the alleyways, which were originally slow, turned into a space of too fast flow, and communication between them became cloudy and lost their way. Alleyways, which used to be a shared space, have become more and more obsessed with the concept of private ownership, and they only claim each other's rights. In this context, walls are not used as past playgrounds or bulletin boards, but as separate and exclude individual areas. This project seeks to re-session the alleyways that used to be a place of slow and communication in the past. By recreating the elements of play that occur in the alley, it is revitalized and created as a field.
To this end, architectural elements scattered around the site were captured and used as elements of alley construction. The wall separating the earth will be dismantled, changed to communicate with each other, and planned as a multi-purpose sign that can be restored to various demands. It varies with the facade of the building and the programs inside and outside, which act as a landscape of the alley.
In addition to the relationship between houses and alleys, the walls of the site also create a mass of dead spaces by sharing land with each other. By erasing the wall between houses, the space is expanded, and the wall facing the alley is dismantled, some of it remains in the seats, and some of it disappears and flows into the community space. Change the architectural elements extracted from the existing ground to Street furniture and re-insert them into the section cut by the road. Through this, residents can experience elements scattered on the existing land in one space and create a road with a mixture of behavior and landscape elements.
The building's elevation allows the internal program to be inferred, and windows, doors, etc. can act as a landscape element of an alley. By analyzing and manipulating them, the landscape of the alley can be drawn into a new form, which is closely related to the internal program, so it presents an organic alley. At the elevation, architectural elements form a grid on the elevation of the dwelling based on such elements as windows, gates, walls, and gates appearing on the surface. An exterior elevation of the building is dismantled by a set grid, and such elements can act as a landscape of an alley. The facade of the segmented wall is extended to the floor pattern of the alley and connected to the opposite dwelling. In this pattern, the program is inserted into the alley in cooperation with the program of the building.
The floor program pattern not only connects houses but also connects alleys and alleys, and the road program is transformed into a community program again, which connects programs and actions between each other while keeping the alleys from losing direction. The alley pattern will be expanded and dismantled again to occupy a specific position. This is not just a program in the alley that connects the program with the previous house, but it is scattered and other spaces come into contact with the program, thus creating an extraordinary space in the alley.

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