Design, in its current and cognizant state, can achieve more than beauty and functionality. At the Pinch library and community center in the Yunnan province’s Shuanghe village in China, it has healed, humbled, and provided hope.
The project was part of a reconstruction effort after earthquakes in September 2012 killed over 80 people and destroyed thousands of buildings, including the village's school and nearly every residence. The government sponsored new concrete and brick houses and a large central plaza. But one year later, residents remained living in tents, and the plaza remained an empty site.
“There was an urgent need to recreate a communal space for the village,” said the University of Hong Kong’s Olivier Ottevaere, designer of the project. The plaza required a program to activate it, he explained.
The answer was the Pinch. Conscious design efforts focused on material, while also envisioning the site as a memorial. “Prior to the earthquake, the village houses—which stood for many years—were intelligently built of mud bricks and timber roofs. After, the use of these local materials were suddenly deemed unsafe,” Ottevaere said. “We attempted to constructively demonstrate that timber structures could not only be safe if properly conceived, but also that one could still build contemporary timber structures using local craftsmanship and technologies that engage the participation and pride of the community.”
A series of trusses is anchored between the upper and lower levels. The roof is used as a viewing deck for the basketball court. “By having all the trusses resting on an existing retaining wall, we provided a descent from the existing road above to the playground below,” explained Ottevaere. “The progressive pitching of the roof attempts to create a dialogue with the dramatic landscape—a valley that the village sits in.”
On the interior, the trusses extend downward to support a floating bookshelf. Simple school benches are used as chairs. The doors can open to create a wide space that extends out to the plaza. “We were conscious of reinforcing a sense of ephemerality, perhaps humility and hope,” Ottevaere said.
Rather than submit to the abandonment of wood construction (as the government did with the homes affected by the earthquake), the design team reasserted the ability to build contemporary structures with local materials—which exemplifies a truly enlightened state.
