NOWON

• Architects

Sanggye-dong, Nowon-gu, is a typical highly residential area in Seoul packed with apartment buildings due to large-scale redevelopment in the 1980s. The block in which Nowon Community Selfsufficiency Center is located has not been redeveloped so far, being backward for a long time. Nowon Community Selfsufficiency Center has been silently playing its role with the goal of realizing a local community for over 30 years. Now that the life of the building has come to an end, it is a new project that demolishes an old building on the same site, expands space through a design competition and improves the environment.

photo_credit Kyungsub Shin — Kyungsub Shin

Nowon Community Selfsufficiency Center is making efforts to solve local unemployment and poverty problems and create a better neighborhood through various projects based on the activities of Nowon Sharing House that has been with poor neighbors since the time of redevelopment in the 1980s. It provides systematic self-sufficiency services to the low-income class and the unemployed so that they can become economically independent and conduct training through basic education, professional technical education to improve working ability, and job provision starting from early educational counseling. The organization is also interested in the welfare of the elderly by operating a senior center in the local area.

The site has the shape of a triangle facing the narrow road of 4m on the north side. It faces the back of the elementary school to the south and is surrounded by old houses. Nowon Community Selfsufficiency Center is planned be accommodating an education center and office for self-support services and a senior citizen center, a resting space for the elderly. In order to effectively utilize the heterogeneous site, a building mass made using two long sides according to the site shape was planned, and the surface in contact with the outer space was maximized by proposing a courtyard to the south. It was designed to be surrounded by rooms centered on the south-facing courtyard with an open view towards the elementary school, creating a pleasant environment for light and ventilation in all private and public spaces indoors.

The senior center on the 1st floor is designed to connect grandmother's room and grandfather's room directly to the silver ground, which is the courtyard, so that the elderly may safely and comfortably utilize the extended space to the outdoors. In addition, it secured the view from the south side facing the wall of the elementary school so that they can see elementary school students running around. The office on the 2nd floor and the education center on the 3rd floor, which are used as the selfsufficiency center, are divided into a large space on the right and a small space on the left with a common area in the center, so that they can be utilized according to purposes of the program and particular attention was paid to the occurrence of noise by using perforated sound-absorbing panels on the ceiling and walls. For the office on the first basement floor, which had the inherent limitation of being underground, an indoor environment with easy lighting and ventilation was created with the Sunken and D.A. plan.

As for the exterior material of the building, clay bricks, a material familiar to the elderly, were used on the first floor, represented by the senior citizens hall, to make it harmonize well with the surrounding environment. White coated metal panels were used for the office and education center on the 2nd and 3rd floors to give a bright and cheerful feeling to the underdeveloped area while easing the impression of large volume. It is unfortunate that the construction of the resting rooftop garden, which was planned in the existing design proposal, could not be carried out at present because of the increase in construction cost due to Covid-19, but I hope that it will be complemented and become a space which will be actively used in the future.

Nowon Community Selfsufficiency Center, which is aimed to help with stable economic activities for the underprivileged, has existed in Sanggye-dong for a long time and will continue to play its role in the same place in the future. It is my hope that Nowon Community Selfsufficiency Center will strive to realize social justice based on the value of respect for human beings and create a liveable local community which is full of brotherhood.