NEW YOUTH COMMUNE |Jilin, China | 2015

Architects: META-Project
Client: Vanke, Jilin, China
General Contractor: Hong Jing Group
Photographers: Su Shengliang, Fang Chun, Chen Su

New Youth Commune, a mixed youth community, located on the edge of Songhua Lake Resort and bordering natural villages, houses 800 people with the upper floors for VANKE operations staff, the middle rented to the commercial tenants in the resort town, the ground floor engaged for camping students/kids and further open to surrounding villagers.

META-Project has long been focusing on what Chinese media called the “ant tribe” problem - many of the young generation live as packed tightly in clusters of poorly remoulded buildings scatted in the city. Based on substantial investigation on hybrid dwelling phenomena since long peculiar to China, from village-in-the-city to the “Tong-zi-lo” housing blocks, the architect has attempted to grasp the dynamics of such settlements and come up with a nuanced spatial grading logic according to the flow of everyday life and neighbourhood interactions, and eventually arrived at a new operative framework of public spaces, that rethink the idea of “social housing” in a flexible, pluralistic and socio-ecological way. 

The design set out from the “Tong-zi-lou” collective housing stereotype in China, and mutated it into an externally undulating and internally interlocked volumetric quartet.

Bridges, stairs and stepped seatings embedded into the atrium, composes an open-street-like public route connecting all grades of communal spaces for varied activities. The simple and flexible framework blends innovative spatial mode with everyday life.

The interior has a valley-like atrium with slanted ceiling for each section of the quartet, allowing natural light and ventilation to form a sustainable micro-climate.

A continuous multi-level public route encouraging cross-layer encounters through the semi-private, shared and collective zones, and to foster the self-growth of community.

The project responds to the hybridity of contemporary Chinese reality and proposes a new paradigm of social housing based on share-living. It enables positive interpersonal interaction and mutual collaboration, through the flexible and multiplex spatial operation, and further develop into a prototype community for contemporary “new youth”.