Student

Xiyue Han

IRREGULAR KEW
 

Irregular Kew aims to create a community centre on a site previously used as a lunatic asylum. The architecture of the former asylum building is now not suitable for a community facility for Kew.

The concept of this project is to breakdown the negative connotations of the former asylum architecture by overlaying a new planning system that disrupts and juxtaposes the regularity of the former. The two types of planning systems, the old and the new, create irregularity both in plan and in elevation of the building while diminishing the negative connotations associated with the former asylum building.

As a strategy for the adaptation of the site and the former asylum building, a 45-degree rotated grid system is adopted as a 2D and 3D strategy across the entire site. The space designed is irregular and hard to define, the interior and exterior start to blend, and reality and history are merged. Two other factors were important considerations in the masterplan design, locating green public space and locating the building programs. The green spaces in Kew were mapped, scaled down and overlaid onto the site, creating an organic arrangement and an irregular one too. Patrick Geddes' ‘Notation of life’ theory was adopted to help inform the location of various programs across the site. The theory outlines an arrangement for the ideal city plan.

Link to folio