Hybrid buildings

Hybrid buildings have “the gene of the mixed-use development in its code” (Fernandez Per, 2009), therefore besides creating urban density in the area would inject the diversity that is currently lacking. This a relatively new typology without many precedents, so we have the complete freedom for intervention (Holl S, 2014). The flexibility to shape a building according to Geelong’s profile with a future-looking perspective will make it goes beyond times. Freedom to juxtapose, creating programmatic relationships between multiple levels and incorporating biophilic design strategies – in other words, to imagine architecture from an ecological approach to inspire the change.

However, the attractiveness of this typology is that is not limited to the programme diversity, but the human experience is one important factor as well. Urban porosity is one of the main parameters of this typology and enables it to create pedestrian-oriented spaces (Holl S, 2014), which makes it relevant for Social Ecology as well.

In addition, hybrid buildings achieve the three of the four conditions that Jacobs states as the ‘indispensable’ ‘to generate exuberant diversity’ (Jacobs J, 1961) and will certainly ‘produce Diversity, Vitality, and general Sense of Community’. The programme diversity offers ‘more than one primary function’ that will attract visitors to come and then generate a ‘dense concentration of people’. While porosity, as a design concept, would break the site into smaller parts and make the entire project to ‘be short’ and promote casual encounters. More specifically talking about Market Square, due to its existing conditions that will be explained further in the next chapters, would ‘mingle buildings’ and the outcome will ‘vary in age and condition’.

In the book This is Hybrid, Fernandez Per analyses about 50 hybrid buildings to find common patterns between them, and understand their impact on the architecture itself and the urban context. These findings are compiled by Wiesner and Gringhuis who organise them into one matrix. These parameters will be used in the analysis of precedents and finally applied to the design of the project.

Steven Holl Architects. Linked Hybrid. China. 2009. Source: Steven Holl Architects©