ROOMS TO BREATHE ‘Mariupol breathes’, as an approach for reimagining the Vyzvolennia square and DASU building, the proposed design aims to fill Mariupol with healthy and happy air that thrives and sustains life. The design by principle attempts to nullify any and all illeffects that the city’s industrial and business activities may pose to people and their living environment. ‘Rooms’ as conceived spatial volumes are variants for play and pause, with its essentiality anchored to ‘breathing’. At large ‘Rooms to breathe’ presents a vision, instead of a solution and looks to create liveable urban commons – for everyone and everything. Intersection – Streets and Buildings
ROOMS FOR NATURE AND PEOPLE TO MAKE MARIUPOL BREATHABLE
Mariupol’s context and its components as end products of history presents order in urban organization and intelligibility in architectural imagery. The design as set in the intersection of streets and buildings, articulates a layer of intricacy and complexity through ‘diversity’. The space is repurposed as ‘people’s paradise’ by constricting the vehicular traffic along the peripheral corridor. The Mira Avenue between the intersections with Torgova and Zemska Streets, the existing Vyzvolennia Square with the Cossacks Park, and the DASU building together form a singular territory as ‘common breathing field’. Pedestrians and cyclists become the priority in the new shared space with timed management of local vehicular traffic. The proposed peripheral loop will be the active shared streets network. In the ‘common breathing field’, the streets are not any more conduits for vehicular traffic; but living corridors. The buildings cannot stay as static objects but will unwrap as spaces for economic stimulation by giving rooms for local businesses. A redefined intersection between the streets and buildings will emerge here and ripple across Mariupol.
RMB357 Interconnection – Rooms linking Rooms As volumes of play and pause organized across the breathing field, the ground level rooms are tied together by a serpentine pedestrian spine. The layout allows free movement as well as curated narration as the rooms link rooms. By play and pause, the rooms signify active and passive engagement of users. The playrooms range as game space, sunken café, amuse fountain, performance floor, food court, parking booths, and workrooms. The public art stations, seating pod, leisure lawn, woodland cluster, and dry court comes as the pause rooms. The rooms are independent units with their own volume, mood, program, and aesthetics. They borrow life from outside as they link people, context, and fellow rooms. This interlinking strategy brings together disparate components of a palette in one canvas. Integration – Green and Blue The rooms are woven with an intricate layer of green and blue landscape components that fill and filter air and water. The existing tree cover is preserved and strengthened with native plantations as clusters, avenues, and specimens. The design respects the natural terrain flowing towards the East and the ground surface is articulated with a combination of porous pebble beds, lawns, permeable hard paving, and sponge basins. Minimal integration of active water structures, responds to the humid climatic condition of Mariupol. The amuse fountain is a room for water play, that shall add dynamism and life in the foreground of the DASU building.
Cossacks Monument as space marker Green transit corridor
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Slow streets loop Vehicle parking Pick-up and drop-off Bicycle parking Public transport
REVITALISATION STRATEGIES FOR THE VYZVOLENNIA SQUARE Tram line retained as garden
Trash can
Integrated seating
Permeable paving Seating Integrated with lighting
Responsive water fountain
ROOMS AND DESIGN ELEMENTS
INSERT INTERCONNECT
INTEGRATE
CRAWLING ROOMS
RMB357
3
1 2 5
18
11
19 16
9 6
15 8 4
LEGEND 16
17
CONTEXT
7
10
1.Mira Avenue 2. Music School 3. The House of Mariupol local government
14
16
17
4. DASU Building 5. Cossacks Monument
PLAY ROOMS 6. Game floor
12 11
13 15
7. People’s cafe 8. Amuse fountain 9. Performance podium 10. Food court 11. Parking booths 12. Public workrooms
PAUSE ROOMS 13. Public Art station 14. Seating pods 15. Leisure lawn 16. Dry court 17. Woodland cluster 18. Garden walk 19. Water court
CONCEPT PLAN General Layout scale 1:1000
REVITALISATION OF DASU BUILDING
RMB357
Seventh Floor
Insertion – Rooms forming Rooms Sixth Floor
The rooms in extension to their spread across territory, crawl over DASU building to impart new energy to its program, purpose, and image. The DASU building is designed to serve as an inclusive community center with a range of activities that stimulate social cohesion and participatory learning. The programmatic zoning raises up the floors with private activities concentrated at the top and public spaces occupying the lower slabs. The insertion of rooms has followed a sequence of strategies based on structural and functional demands. The building terraces on the second and fourth floors integrate active sport activities and reading spaces respectively and blur the functional distinction of outdoor and indoor. The structural framework also provides flexibility to transform outdoor rooms as semi-indoor volumes to best suit the cold winters. The inserted rooms bring porosity, adds floor spaces, and enables elements of nature to be part of the built fabric – in toto revitalizing DASU as a breathable structure with rooms forming rooms.
Rooms as extended Outdoor Classrooms connecting to nature
DASU BUILDING FLOOR PLANS Fifth Floor
Terraces for community food courts Fourth Floor
Third Floor
Rooms for Exhibition connecting to the plaza
COMMUNITY LIBRARY
INDOORSPACE CIRCULATION SPACE BREATHING ROOM Existing Building
Distribution of Breathing Area
Proposed Breathing Area
Second Floor
AREA STRATEGY Rooms for Play
First Floor
ENTRANCE LOBBY
CONNECTING THE PLAZA TO THE FACADE Rooms for Leisure
Ground Floor
EXTENDED ROOMS AS TERRACES FOR NATURE
Rooms for large Trees
INCUBATION LAB READING MEETING AREA
ROOM
LIBRARY COMPUTER LAB
CO-WORKING STUDIOS CLASSROOM X8 RECREATIONAL SPORTS/ RUNNING TRACK GAME COURT STAFF ROOM LOUNGE AREA ART/MUSIC/DANCE STUDIO AUDIEXHIBITION MEETING ROOM WORKSHOP INFO CENTER EXHIBITION ADMINISTRATION GALLERY MULTIPURPOSE ROOM STORAGE
SHOPPING STREET EVENT AREA
PROGRAM ZONING
Basement
TORIUM THEATRE
FOOD COURT SERVICE CAFETERIA ROOM
EXPLODED AXONOMETRY
PLAY TERRACE
RMB357
0m
10m
PLAZA SECTION
LANDSCAPE ROOMS
MARIUPOL VISION Inclusion – People and Place
HEALTHY
The rooms are laid out with an unsaid hierarchy that sets the gradation between one another by the varying density of greenery, the degree of enclosure and transparency, the proportion of active edges, and the punctuation with colour. This presents the user with diverse experiences. Scaling up this approach, the city of Mariupol is proposed to develop a breathing corridor along Mira Avenue by prioritizing public transport, walking and cycling, and connecting multiple rooms from the city.
INCLUSIVE
As it expands, the ‘Rooms to Breathe’ will bind people, make Mariupol – healthy, playful, inclusive, and Regenerative. PLAYFUL
BREATHABLE CORRIDOR
~4.8 km
breathing corridor (Mira Avenue) for Mariupol, by prioritizing Public Transport, Pedestrians and Cyclists
~65,000 sq m
vehicle-free space reconstructing the Vyzvolennia square as people’s place
40+
‘Rooms to breathe’ crawl over Vyzvolennia square and DASU Building as spatial stimulators
50%
increase in permeable ground surface with filtration beds and water percolation basins.