Abundance of staggered housing

Abundance of staggered housing

PROCESS TAGS

BSc3

CONTENT TAGS

Existing Structures Regeneration

LOCATION

Cardiff, Wales, CF10 2AF, United Kingdom

Project Description

Car park converted into residential building

My site is Dumfries Place, that is a five level carpark that associated with NCP, it is located in Cardiff city centre. My project is to turn this existing car park into a residential building. The demand for housing in Cardiff is growing, but at the same time, when we look at the map of Cardiff shows that there are a lot of car parks throughout the city centre.

Perhaps converting some of the car parks to residential units might be a good way of solving two problems at once, and that is how this project came about. A very challenging aspect of this car park is that due to the topography, the entire eastern part of the car park is 1.2m higher than the other half, while the southern part is on a slope, so there is an extra layer of six storeys.

As the original car park and most of the surrounding buildings have red brick facades, I intend to continue using it for the new building, along black steel for the window frames and railings. A facade of the same material will give a sense of continuity to the new building. For residential space, I believe that high-rise housing should not be enclosed, it should have semi-open spaces where social interaction and communication can take place.

So firstly, I designed the corridor in a fishbone shape and placed some greenery in the openings so that the side near the corridor has windows and is not disturbed by others passing through the corridor. Secondly, I create more multi-storey staggered spaces than single-storey houses. This way the same occupant can have more different views.

Yi Ren Wang

BSc