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Press Release

Yongning Station Urban Mini Complex

A' Design Award 2020 Silver Winner in Architecture, Building and Structure Design

23 April 2020

Yongning Station Urban Mini Complex by Yijia Hu
Yongning Station Urban Mini Complex by Yijia Hu
Yongning Station Urban Mini Complex by Yijia Hu
Yongning Station Urban Mini Complex by Yijia Hu
Yongning Station Urban Mini Complex by Yijia Hu

Yijia Hu · CLIENT: Hu Yijia

Yongning Station is a small urban complex in Yongning, China. Public toilets are the main function, combined with leisure, exhibition and other supporting services. The building opens a visual channel between the city and the landscape, and the plan forms a shape like the number eight. Along the route, a public exhibition hall faces the river on the left, an inward-looking public toilet area stands on the right, and a narrow corridor passes among osmanthus trees. The screen is the key element that organizes space and frames the scenery.

Press Kit

Unique Properties
Yongning Station is an urban MINI complex with public toilets as the main function and combined with leisure, exhibition and other supporting services.
The public exhibition hall enjoys an open view to the river. The designers transformed the thickness of the "screen" into a three-dimensional "screen niche" of its own system. The physical part conceals service functions such as sales, washing and storage, etc., and the white window holes become the eyes to seize the changing scenery of nature.
Dimensions & Packaging
Category: urban MINI complex
Area: 450sqm
plot ratio: 0.3
Tags
Station, public exhibition hall, public toilet, leisure, Hu Yijia
Production Technology
The public toilet is the core interpretation of the concept of "returning to public private space". Internally, the plane is arranged according to the modulus of 300mm, and functional modules such as wall column network, bathroom equipment, hvac and exhaust air are installed on this chassis. The standard modular unit limits the body space of the user's smallest unit to minimize the private space.
Design Challenge
The challenge was how to combine openness of public area and privacy of toilet area.
"Screen" was used as a key element to organize space and incorporate scenery. In the exhibition hall that enjoys an open view to river, thickness of the "screen" is transformed into a three-dimensional "screen niche", with service functions for selling, washing and storage hidden inward. In toilet area, "screen" is compressed into a thin layer of mirror, which wraps 4 independent boxes and forms an interface.
Project Duration
Duration: from May 2018 to May 2019
Location: Yongning, China
Operation Flow
The site is located in the transitional part of landscape rambling-way and urban fast road. "OPEN" is the first thinking of architecture to intervene in the site. It opens the visual channel of city and landscape like uncovering exhibition, forms the shape of "eight". Along the route, there is a public exhibition hall facing the river view on the left, an introverted public toilet space on the right, and a strip corridor walking among the Osman thus trees.
Research
In 2004, Yongning park went through a large-scale renovation, which is the local realization of the "anti-planning" construction concept of native landscape. It transformed a river channel with the single function of flood control into a diversified habitat system, and won the annual awards of the ministry of construction and the American Society of Landscape Architects. However, with the s hift of the center of gravity of urban public activity space, the site is slowly waning and losing its vitality.
Inspiration
In memory, the Yongning park before repair is a forbidden land, the river is dangerous, and it is full of mudflat.
When I was a child, I would go to catch crabs by the river with my little friends after school. However, I was always wary of the danger of sunset ebb tide. Suddenly there was a parental reprimand, the moment when the afterglow disappears into the earth plane...The uncertainty of these moments is fixed into an impression word in the deep memory - fleeting scenery.
Image Credits
Photographers: Hu Yijie, Zhang Yi

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