WE-DESIGNS.ORG, LLC, in collaboration with XP& Architecture, shared with us their proposal for a sustainable mixed-use development project, aimed to be a developmental landmark, using reconfigured traces of shipping containers. They will do so through diligently reconnecting, revitalising, and humanizing the accessibility of the City of Long Beach, Long Beach Blvd and the Broadway Area. More images and a brief description after the break.
Through proposing three types of innovatively reconstructed modular shipping containers, the overall construct leads to open courtyards, interlocking units, and playfully generated programs that introduce a new innovative topological design that regenerates and reconnects the community.
Bringing together a fusion of technological, economical and cultural entities, and combining a public free space into an interlocked modular construct, which includes an internal courtyard as public landscape, the newly developed (RE)Configured-Assemblage becomes an open playground of hidden gems, which offers the community countless integrated opportunities to develop and harmonize the City of Long Beach, Long Beach Blvd Area. The shifting of the vertical containers on the Intelligent Daylight Façade represents the constant movement of containers in the nation’s busiest container port.
Acting as an intermediary connector and infiltrator within five main connections of interlocked programmatic organization—between levels of: tnstitutional (eco-edu center), studios/art galleries/loft spaces (also acts as temporary lodging spaces), commercial (retail/stores), and two f&b options (cafe ground floor/roof top bar)—(RE)Configured- Assemblage challenges the visceral and abundantly urbanized City of Long Beach, Long Beach Blvd Area that sustainability feeds itself through both land and sun.
Through building a new and innovative infrastructural system that feeds into the ‘connectors’, each layer of program interlocks and intersects each other, by regenerating new energy and systematic advances a continued developmental and renewed energy which each path brings.
Sustainable Strategy / Feasibility Concept:
The Unrolled/Reconfigured Container Skin is a secondary ‘skin’ made entirely from access and unfolded containers addresses the compensation for the Southern California Climate. This layer acts to protect the interior containers from extensive solar heat gain. The secondary skin saves on cooling compensation measures like HVAC systems or expensive insulation materials, while offering an in-between. Additionally, the secondary skin and internal containers mediates as a threshold for natural ventilation that exhausts the remaining excessive heat gain.
Alternately, the Intelligent Daylight Façade development of (RE)Configured- Assemblage, through the arrangement of a “O” ring plan typology, offers both adaptive space planning (creating ad-hoc creative and dynamic spaces for exhibition and open-use), and spacious circulation from the East and West wings of the building. While the technology of the façade, designed with sequential openings of the corrugated container skin and Bio-Glass elements, provides punctures for additional ventilation and solar louvers which provides sufficient daylight for its occupants on higher level floors.
Understanding that in Southern California many indoor tasks can be performed outside, the “O” ring Dynamic Space Controlled Circulation Façade acts dualistically as a threshold and intermediary space, between the core occupiable spaces and circulatory spaces. Through the geometrical manipulation of containers (the vertical pushing or pulling of the containers) against each other, (RE)Configured- Assemblage creates outdoor spaces (balconies) that act as additional space which are utilized by its occupants. Open air areas balconies are also protected for exposure with either the secondary skin or green-roof.
An added touch is the re-adapted containers as furniture/planters, which circulate the edge of the building on the ground floor. These street furniture and planters are designed in three scales of 1ft (glass patches), 3ft (flower planters), 5ft (seating/lighting/shrubbery)—are means to incorporate reconfigured containers as street seating, rest areas for occupants and visitors, while providing street lighting for the building itself.
Architects: WE-DESIGNS.ORG, XP& Architecture Location: Long Beach, California, United States Project Lead: Wendy W Fok Design Architect: Wendy W Fok Project Architect: Judith Mussel Design Team: Ben Vongvanij, Barnett Chaunault, Rolando Lopez Cost Estimator: Jenny Chow, Judith Mussel Technical / Environmental Consultant: Judith Mussel, LEED AP; Jenny Chow, LEED AP Start Date: March 11, 2011 Current Phase: Design complete Cost: $525625 USD (Estimated) Size: 10,500 sq. ft Project Type: Mixed-Use Public Space/Gathering Space LEED Accreditation: Platinum Beneficiaries: Residents, Young Families, Children, Artists, Creative Personalities, Visitors, and the Construction Industry who are interested in LEED Platinum and Sustainable Adaptive Built Innovative Design Collaborations within the City of Long Beach for the site at Broadway and Long Beach Blvd, the Port within the Area, and Los Angeles vicinity. Number of Beneficiaries: 9,862,049
