Culture & Living Space of Dabu Village Songxi County / Cocoon Studio

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Text description provided by the architects.Mixing of new and old: Culture & Living Space of Dabu Village Songxi County. The project is the renovation of one group of traditional houses in Dabu village to form a new public space for the village. We try to present contemporary space quality and value by balance the preservation of historical features and introduction of new structure and spaces.The northern part is complete in form with components like carved wooden structures, rammed earth walls, and relief sculpture of “福“ depicting the historical atmosphere of the place. We introduce a vertical structure rooted in between these components and grow above to form a new space as the roof. It is an open space floating on the walls and wood frames in the upper part with a horizontal view of the natural landscape and roofs. Beneath this structure, the original wood structure of the house is preserved. The floor of the roof space follows the position and elevation of the wooden purlins, creating large slatted steps facing the landscape for people to sit on. The wooden frame and the new structure are integrated through staggered steps, restoring the structural strength of the wooden structure supporting the roof and retaining the spatial weight of the hall. The light and shadow revealed from the gaps prompt the reconstruction of structure and space, integrating contemporary experience into the historical atmosphere.The renovation design starts by dealing with new and old. The overall renovation strategy is to protect and retain valuable components based on the current situation and integrate them with new structures to form a spatial experience where the old and the new are intertwined. We adapt the strategy of darning in the southern part to correspond to the scattered building conditions. Considering that it does not affect the existing structural foundation, the new space is embedded in the building pattern diagonally staggered, forming a homogeneous pattern of alternating old and new interspersed courtyards and buildings.As the cultural living space of Dabu Village, the public attributes of the project are very important. We turned our attention to the outdoor space on the roof. Here, you can touch the wind-eroded rammed earth walls up close and climb up the tile roofs facing the landscape. At one end of the roof, a sky bridge cantilevers over the street towards the river, directing the roof space to the distant view of the landscape. The white arched curved piers in a special form transcend the scale of the village, build a contemporary landmark by the river, and become a new collective memory of the village. Let's look at it from a distance. This bridge is just like the causeway piers that historically extended villages to the river in the same linear form, continuing the cultural memory of the village living towards the river.