CATALYSTS | XL M S
Location: Charlottesville, VA
Course: ARCH 7010 | Fall 2016
Instructor: Margarita Jover
The design reuses the old and unsatısfactory West Medıcal Complex located in Charlottesville and rethinks it as a student housing project. The project’s aim is to first connect the City of Charlottesville to UVA and by doing that, offer a new kind of housing environment for the newcoming students. This new environment will build an identity for students that will make them appreciate and respect knowledge, environment and urban life by making them an integral part of both the city and the University of Virginia.
The project’s aim is to first connect the City of Charlottesville to UVA and by doing that, offer a new kind of housing environment for the newcoming students. Therefore, this new environment will build an identity for students that will make them appreciate and respect knowledge, environment and urban life by making them an integral part of both the city and the UVA. To achieve this, project uses ground strategies that create an flowing and open public space and special spaces which are termed as social catalysts used in different scales to reach and spark connections in different scales. On ground level, an unobstructed and easy movement between the university and the city is provided with entrance from various key locations such as West Main Street, Jefferson Park Avenue and The Lawn, let people meander around certain activity spaces along the way.
Project provides an open public space under the closed mass and continues the free flow of movement and meandering by housing workshops, marketplace, music studio, auditorium, retail and grocery store between The Lawn and the city. Topography is also used by tucking in programs and providing activity spaces on various levels. The project helps connect the city and the university also by providing a transit hub that promotes the use of public transportation. As closed spaces, in an urban scale, the project reaches out to surrounding built environment such as the Open House building and the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. The buildings also tap into the surrounding power plant buildings, transforming and making them a part of the habitable urban environment.
At a building scale, the catalysts act as common ground for students, faculty and hotel residents in the project providing programs such as entertainment, leisure and study spaces. At the unit scale the catalysts activate a relationship between housing units, eliminating the feeling of isolated boxes of most student dormitories. Having a multiplicity of unit types organized as static and dynamic spaces provides mutable spaces with various levels of privacies that enhance the quality of life both inside/outside of the unit and between the unit and the exterior environment.
