Cultural Activity Center of Beijing Guang?anmennei Community
Site and strategy

The site is located at the Huaxing Building, Guangyi Street, Xicheng district of Beijing. Formerly, the ground floor was rented as ballrooms, what bellow it is a small hotel. During the new round of regeneration of backstreets and vacating to the urban space, the government took over space on a lease and invested in upgrading the function. The “last ballroom” was reinvigorated as a cultural activity centre that serves the local community.
Photography by © Kangshuo Tang
Before the regeneration, the ground floor could not connect with the basement due to the different programs. Additionally, the high dense beam frame impeded the uses of activity space. Thus, connectivity, accessibility, and spatial improvement under the original structure’s demand emphasize this project. In consonance with the community organizer and locals’ functional requirements, we concluded twelve “space name card” to generate community cultural activity space based on sharing mode and a low-cost objective. The ground floor had a larger open area; hence it was oriented as the community cultural space; the basement was adapted as an entertainment space for the local community because of its flexible unit sizes. We individually inserted “geometries” and “continuous ceiling” to adjust the transformation for the top and down floor.
Furthermore, we treated the emergency...