By Kang-Yi Shen
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Connection to Harringay Warehouse District
Context key elements of Harringay Warehouse District are extracted as components to organize the proposed pavilion including brick as a strong urban facade material, steel truss as an industrial signature and scrawl street art as part of the artistic community soul. Not only these key elements perform as the material identification themselves but they also play significant role as a bridge to connect the community and the pavilion both as user and builder. From zero point of the proposal, it will be a story book to record the trail of every participant of the community.
Proposal Outline
The proposal focuses participation of Harringay warehouse community not only on user participation but also on building participation. The three key elements extracted from the context are expected to play an important role strengthening communication, interaction and connection between the architecture and the community.
For brick, it is the surface of the proposal and means to respond the industrial neighborhood materiality and cooperate with the building opposite the street on the south as a red brick main gate welcoming people to enter Harringay Warehouse District. Additionally, the way to arrange bricks can be quite flexible and insect local artistic inspiration (like Alva Aalto house in the 1950s as a key movement of localism with the history of modern architecture development).
For steel truss, it is one of the most efficient and effected methods to build roof, which is not a coincidence that it is popular in industrial buildings. ETFE plastic material as a soft and strong transparent material can be applied to cover the space between trusses to let sunlight in and let the form of truss as a sculptural element out.
For scrawl street art, it makes the proposed brick facade pavilion a painting canvas for local artists to contribute and it can be sustainable to be used as parchment (or canvas). As artpiece it is not only part of the building but also part of the exhibition inside the building.
In terms of architectural planning, the proposal does not mean to define the pavilion as a theater with one big space. It defines the site as an archipelago but connects each other from view to movement. An itinerary is designed for the pavilion to provide a joy of navigating through and allows multiple events happening inside. Various spatial characters are designed including indoor space, gray space, introversive outdoor space and extroversive outdoor space to vary the flexibility and containment of the pavilion. Different scales and dimensions of space are also concerned inside the master plan of the site. There are S, M, L space for both indoors and outdoors for exhibition, celebration, market, workshop, show, etc. and the L interior space can hold a talk with as much as 70 people.
The proposed pavilion will be a story book and advertising board telling stories of the site Harringay Warehouse District, the contributing trail of Harringay Warehouse Community, the festival and itself. It will be a significant part of the festival holding various types of events fulfilling various requirements with its flexibility. And it will be a society landscape for the neighborhood even after the festival.