Public Village Center of Qili Village / SSDesign

Curated by 韩双羽 - HAN Shuangyu

Architects: SSDesign
Area: 2000 m²
Year: 2020
Photographs:Yilong Zhao

Normal Village of China. Qili village is one of the most common villages in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, but it represents the most typical batch. The epitome of most rural areas in Zhejiang and Jiangsu can be seen here, such as flat terrain, vast paddy fields scattered street shops, and new rural settlements. Some old neighborhoods along the river are small in scale. With the construction of new countryside, traces of development and change in the times have been left to some extent.

Public Village Center of Qili Village is located at the entrance of Qili Village, Gaoqiao street, Tongxiang. Rebuilt from a school of 1990s. It used to be a factory for a period of time. This single corridor, three-story slab building is ordinary. Although it does not have the cornices and woodwork as traditional ancient buildings in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, as an ordinary Chinese rural building, in these 30 years of changes, this building is closely related to the life of the village and villagers, changing roles, and bearing the memory of several generations.

Reconstruction of role and memory. The reconstruction of such a building is not only a project for Qili Village, but also a continuation of the story and a reshaping of cultural life. The public and cultural attributes of the site should be restored and activated, public forecourt needs to restore popularity, and educational buildings should be continued to spread culture and education. After the transformation, space bears more roles and responsibilities. The office of the village committee has been moved from the opposite corner. The original teaching building has been used as the main building of the office of the village committee. The car shed becomes a village history corridor and the playground changes to a villagers' activity square. The introduction of a rural library provides a new learning place, inherits the enlightenment and development of the cultural cognition in the village, and becomes an important driving of rural culture. After the completion of the Public Village Center, the role of the building has been reshaped, and it has once again become a gathering place of cultural life at the entrance of the village.

Entrance Courtyard of Village. "There is a big gap between rural buildings whether it has a yard. Chinese lifestyle is centered around yards." The utilize of the original playground is an important part of the Public Village Center. Breaking the closed boundary and creating an open village committee compound can help it become the gathering place of Qili Village's cultural life and give the traditional village the attribute of gathering leisure. The scale and state closer to the public space of traditional villages, bring people a more intimate atmosphere and become a public activity space for village cadres and villagers to participate in and interact with each other. On both sides of the courtyard, there is a large area of wind and rain corridor, forming a flexible space and creating more leisure and cultural activities.

The small courtyard and patio make the activity experience in the large courtyard and corridor more diverse and delicate. The combination of the multi-scale courtyard and the landscape makes the space between the building and the corridor full of vitality and comfort. The interlaced walls also make the courtyard more interesting and hierarchical. This form, which combined with the courtyard space, breaks the seriousness sense of normal committee office building and creates a diversified village courtyard atmosphere.

The construction of the library breaks away from the rigid one-line architectural form in the spatial layout, which makes the building group enclosed. The overhead type design makes the library as little as possible to occupy the public square space and maintains the openness and freedom of the bottom square. The design of village history and culture corridor ensures the continuous spatial form and leaves the mark of village time.

Rural Construction. The building's sense of construction and material property is the representation of rural houses' warmth. Through the overlapping of materials to express and retain part of the historical memory, let the building becomes the carrier of content. During the reconstruction of the Public Village Center, local old materials are recycled and utilized to ensure the traditional sense of construction. The concrete pouring corridor, the cement brick enclosure, the old black and red brick exhibition wall, without painting, all reflect the rural construction technology.

Building houses in the countryside is most constructive. Clear structure and less decoration, material, and framework can be discerned. Regardless of style and form, they all have a strong sense of structure and masonry. Constructiveness has been emphasized during the rebuild period. The exposed floor and column are clearly displayed. The masonry of the wall also has different stacking methods. In the public space on the first floor, local material and old bricks which are recycled from surrounding villages are utilized to lay the exhibition walls and enclosing walls. The second and third floors are built with hollow cement bricks through two groups of modules and a staggered joint method. Due to the different depths of the entity, subtle light and shadow are formed on the facade, the indoor corridor is protected from direct sunlight. People shuttling between them can also feel the mild atmosphere bring by the light and shadow changes of cement bricks. Not only in the construction of materials and structures, but cultural life is also an important part of rural construction.

Every village has its unique value and every old house may describe the memory and emotion of people's life. This old primary school used to be the place where the local villagers grew up, bearing the memories of many people. Now the construction of the library has aroused the feelings of the past and rebuilt the cultural atmosphere here. More than 1080 books donated by local villagers filled the bookshelves, and the government cooperates to improve the place for reading and learning. Recycled historical objects are displaying in the village history and culture corridor, which deepens villagers' feelings for countryside life. The villagers' emotions and memory of daily life can not be ignored. Rural construction should not only emphasis the implementation of the project, but also need to stimulate the enthusiasm of the people in the countryside to participate in the contemporary rural cultural life.