Introduction
The project, located in the heart of Palermo in southern Italy, will re-use the construction of a part of the abandoned building Santa Maria del Soccorso (Senta Maria del Soccorso) to establish an intercultural exchange center. The project will enhance non-verbal communication between people (low-intensity contact) through the three-dimensional spatial language inside the building. Under the long-term effect, it encourages people to engage in language communication (medium-intensity contact). It used to be a church. Due to its geographical attributes and its own functional attributes, I wanted to promote the exchange of religious culture and art by keeping the memory (adding elements of the church inside the building) to balance and interact with the independence of different cultures. While breaking the barriers and borders in people’s communication, the building contains education, leisure, and entertainment, as well as providing some living places to improve the cultural, health and safety education of locals and immigrants. And in my project, some spaces have a fixed role, and some spaces can be flexibly used as different functions according to time (morning, evening, weekdays, or weekends) so as to make the building produce more value more efficiently.
