Floating Grounds  

Public facilities in modern days are involved in providing various utilities to people in cities as a place to relax, a cafe, an everyday lounge and a playground to children. The New Youth Center is designed to be an open place, like a school playground, embracing everyday life of people, communities, integration between cities and society and cultures. By vertically Floating Grounds on Songdo’s Cityscape, we design a symbolic landscape of Songdo and suggest a new paradigm to the urban community bringing society, people and youth together.

A promenade to daily life : New Community Place in Songdo City

The school playground has involved in an important role as a communal space for local communities. It used to be a Void in the city center for a long time providing copious events of youth and the local residents. However, in cities where it is densely populated which leads to lack of venues to contain various contents, school fields lost its role as an open space for communities.

This proposal suggests vertical Floating Grounds containing a community of public facilities in contrast to the current isolated island-type building. Four unique contents are stacked on each Ground and the space created by pushing and pulling each Ground, an integrated void and various internal/external activity spaces were planned. Contents created in these vertical grounds and the transparent space open for each floor provide coexistence of users, everyday encounters and on-going dialogue between the space and the city. This unorthodox and modern Youth Center unify the community and citizens of Yeonsu-gu and will evolve into a new urban community facility that contains lively youth experience contents.

Maximize Multi-Layered Grounds: The Desire of Youth Experience

“Man’s desire is the desire of the Other” (French psychoanalyst Lacan, 1977 ‘DESIRE’)

Adolescence is a period in which each one of them should be able to express their desires and form their dreams. Experience, interactions and emotional exchanges with peers are crucial since these desires are influences through relationships hence youngsters need space, opportunities and contents. We designed the new Youth Center as original and interesting event-type Grounds, and created an experience space that stimulates the youth’s sense of sharing and expresses their desires through large and small-scale voids that connect the spaces.

By vertically stacking four unique Grounds, the horizontal playground function where daily encounters take place has been restructured vertically. The grounds of the lower floors emphasized openness as a coexistence space (Public/Exercise & Office), and the grounds of the upper floors emphasized independence and creativity as a youth-only space (Youth/ Leisure & Activity). The 4 Grounds are composed of specialized content for each floor, but through the huge void space inside, it is planned so that users’ communication and events can coexist. In particular, the first floor was zoned as an open and projected public space for easy access by all users, and a landscape facility for youth experience activities and a terrace where the natural scenery can be viewed were planned on the outer periphery of each ground. In addition, for the user’s hands-on community, spiral staircase and book step bring youth and each Grounds together.