Cultural Center for a traditional loam village - Hakka - at Fujian China

Affected by globalization and modernization, China has accelerated urbanization in the past few decades. traditional handcrafts have been replaced by industrialization.In this project I am trying to fit a contemporary clay building in this traditional loam village in order to maintain the traditional handcraft and construction technology.

CONCEPT The site is in a complicated context, the buildings of the whole village were built according to the river and topography.It is in a small clay building ensemble with an irregular square. There are four large rammed earth buildings and a brick building with square and rectangular shapes nearby, all of which are for public use: temples, businesses, hotels and a special museum-Hakka Zu Xun Museum.\nThere is an existing building on the site, which was built between 1995 and 1996 with brick and concrete, which was a service building for tourists at that time, and now the main building is empty. The clay building ensemble is disoriented. In order to better organize the surrounding clay buildings and the public space, the existing houses are demolished and a three-storey square clay building culture center with an inner courtyard is proposed. With the new cultural center, the square will be the center of the ensemble and the houses will be better connected by the square.\nLAYOUT The functional layout is based on the construction character of the rammed earth building.On the ground floor are the lobby, handcraft room, tea, a small hall for traditional puppet shows, the storage room and the service room; On the 1st floor there is an exhibition room for traditional arts and handcrafts; There can be more opening in the roof floor, so there will be a library.\nFACADE In Fujian there is a lot of rain, which is why the traditional clay building has a large eaves (1.5-2m wide) to better protect the clay walls on the ground floor, but theoretically the walls on the upper floors do not need as much eaves. That is why in this building the walls on the upper floors will protrude outwards. Each floor will go out twice. Each layer will go out 100mm. So each floor has two layers, the propagation is 4 to 3.\nCONSTRUCTION The new cultural center will also be built with rammed earth on the outside and wood on the inside. The base of clay wall is rammed concrete with the khaki color, which fits better with the rammed earth. The connection between the column and beams is made with a small metal element.