LAND Community Center

Atelier Ping Jiang | EID Arch

Located in the new district of Xi’an, LAND Community Center serves as a social and cultural venue for the burgeoning neighborhood. The project is completed on Aug. 2020, with total building area around 4,500 square meters, and the client is Shaanxi Vanland Real Estate Co.,Ltd. Conceived as a floating gateway for a new residential development, LAND Community Center consists of community service center, cafeteria, gallery, multi-purpose room for educational and recreational purposes, reading room, a daycare center for children, it also provides a gymnasium and swimming pool below grade. These recreational spaces are organized around an oval sunken courtyard to allow the natural light to penetrate into the underground facilities.

Beyond the scope of community center itself, the project is designed as an urban structure which aims to provide intimate pockets of public space. By elevating the gallery, exhibition space and community service center above ground, this community center frees up more open space for the neighborhood, providing a civic place for casual gathering and communal activities.

Designed as a LEED Gold certified building, it was conceived as a bioclimatic infrastructure which tries to obtain its levels of comfort by combining the local natural resources, both climatic and material ones.

In contrast to many rapid urban developments in China, this gravity-defying structure not only establishes a unique architectural expression for the burgeoning residential complex, it maximizes the provision of open and inclusive civic spaces for communal experience, creating a sense of neighborhood and belonging for the otherwise nondescriptive urban district.