Praxis d'Architecture

Songzhuang, a district east of Beijing, is undergoing dramatic transformation from a painter’s village to a creative industry cluster. Youth Career Development Center is founded by Songzhuang county government aiming towards creating career opportunities for young people. It will be partially occupied by government youth league and partially leased out to small firms in innovative industry. Given functional use, total area requirement and height limit, the new building encounters a very constrained site. We intended to create a series of public spaces, both indoor and outdoor, to foster interaction among local government, innovative industry practitioners and local artists.

A series of terraces at varies levels is generated at southeast side to make way for southern sun light into the building, to release the spatial tension at southeast corner imposed by the existing building, to protect the terraces from northwest winter wind, to extend the street onto the building…

As a result of the terrace profile generated from outside, the indoor public spaces consequently take on different heights. The highest one is sky lit to facilitate art exhibit, and the lower spaces carry the façade material – terracotta panel – to the inside to manifest flow and movement. Moving along the spaces, the hanging panels react to spaces of different qualities by turning up gradually , to exhibit an alternative way of mounting the material, and consequently revealing activities inside the offices and registering changing of day light when approaching the atrium.