Paraground
Location Analysis
Xinxing harbour village, located in Chengmai county, Hainan, situated in the middle of river and ocean. The current weak resilient system is lack of multiple tenacity to resist natural disaster on the site. Only the embankment act as a solid interface cutting the wetland and the village.
Para-
From ancient Greek(pará, “beside; next to, near, from; against, contrary to”).Paraground, attached interfaces, connecting old and new village life,simultaneously acting as mechanism to increase tenacity.
Resilient city is not a passive concept to resist disasters, whereas it is an active and positive concept combing disaster preventing system and others, giving local residents a better living condition and values.We aim to design a multiple resilience system, following the original east-west relative-based village developing pattern, using different scale “platforms” as intervention, to integrate multivariate systems.
Considering the site condition and budget issue, we separate the total design project into 4 phases, integrating the new 80 to 100 family city,
natural environment, disaster resilience and power supply, to establish a complex resilient network, proposing a total design strategy for 21- century resilient city.
Confronting the construction of the new community, the current weak sewage collection and disposal system would be enhanced by a collective sewage disposal center, through purifying, precipitating and filtrating by mangroves. Through the whole process, a thriving new coastal landscape would be established.
Concerning of the additional 80 – 100 family community, we took the advantage of the 2.5m tide level, inserting tidal power on the wetland to convert the original linear energy system into a loop system. Creating a more sufficient and ecofriendly power system.
To continue the original west-east urban fabric and neighborhood relationship, we used paraground platforms to enter the new community on the east, maintaining the atmosphere of the site.
Binding with 4 other systems, people started to live in a complex tenacity network.
Xinxing Harbour Village situated on the disaster area. When typhoon stricken, it caused a lot of damage on net cage aquaculture and fishing boat, and also caused evacuation issues in the village.
We strategically relocated the original open spaces and input “release point” to create a platform for villager to evacuate to the new community on typhoon days. On normal days, it can simultaneously be community activity spaces and storage usage.
Paraground was not a heterogeneous implantation, but an extension of current hierarchy. It was a strategy, linking
multiple systems and create values from the coexisting networks.