RAD STUDIO
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Resurfaced

When dealing with a project that has been affected by a natural disaster, it’s important to design in a way that remembers the past but is also able to look ahe ad and move forward into the future in many way. It becomes a monument representing the past but also a symbol of progress and hope. 

The motive was to create a new surface on the site that allows for citizens to symbolically rise above the desvastating times and and find new and better uses for the surface that what the orginal site was able to do. This is done through the representation of the lotus plant, which symbolically refers to the idea of “rising from the ashes” out of the muddy waters to create something beautiful, fresh, and progressive. In this project, the surface begins to grow out of the existing broken earth, through the use of light wells and columns, in order to create a new surface above that allows for new activities, movement, and connections through and to certain areas of the site. The surface is flexible and adaptable based upon contextual conditions and programmatic organizations and can be considered an icon and for the city of Yingxiu and the people that live there.