This time, the young people of ttg hope to bring their concepts in Beijing Together Hostel to the City of Suzhou. On the basis of focusing on comfortability, factors beyond living, such as communication, experience, as well as the construction of young community environment are paid attention to more than ever. This makes Together · Venue Fawn Hostel Suzhou become a branch venue of the La Biennale di Venezia 2018 in Suzhou, a main guest city in China.
Area: 1400 ㎡
Interior architecture design consultant: Cao Pu
Project team: Cao Pu, Xichen Que(ttg)
Information and signage system design: Dayu Liao(ttg), Xichen Que(ttg)
Construction design/Construction: Shanghai Rare architectural design engineering Co.,Ltd
Photographs: Xichen Que(ttg)
The beginning of this project was rooted in the selection of sites for hostels as well as the study of adjacent city environment. The building is located in one of the busiest downtown areas, and also an important traffic point of the city. The construction itself was once a very popular department store named Beiding back in the 70s and 80s with a long history of business and deep local folk-custom. Due to its location and the adjoining business streets, people here are used to consider the building units along the street to be commercial stores.
The design aims to maintain the city living habits which has been melted into the area long time ago, and plans a series of vivid pop-up stores as well as a café on the exterior façade of the building. In this way, the feeling of interference and rejection of this living area into a business domain can be avoided, on the one hand; and on the other, after checking in the Hostel, young people are given the opportunity to rent these shops to start their “little businesses”, no matter it is a second-hand book store or a flea market.
With enough talent, they can even put their artistic works on sale. In order to associate with the living functions of the Hostel, the design also plans a considerable communal space for young people to meet friends, discuss business, read, eat, watch movies, and, of course, sharing activities at any random times. It is the communal spaces that associates the living areas and external shops to create a synthesis of habitancy and fairs for the young. The clients of the Hostel will have more opportunity to know each other, and more experience of the community due to this design.
When come to space design, Suzhou Together Hostel uses five embedded glass houselet stores and an entrance porch, starting from the stores on the exterior façade and stretching into the building, to interfere with the relevant dull external appearance and expand the transmittance of the building to the largest extent. People are able to see through the communal spaces via the external stores, the multiple layers of the building and even on-going activities when passing by. The interior spaces, the pavement as well as the square for pop-up fairs outside the Hostel are all sealed together by these stores.
Based on guarantee of privacy and a high degree of comfort, the room space also demonstrates openness and communication—on the second floor right above the exterior shops, the clothes drying area and activity space of the dormitories connect to each other and form a complete veranda.
These thoughts, and the specific carrying out of them, give the City of Suzhou an animated “façade of youth”, and render the primary construction a transparent character of “indoor garden”.
