Community Town Hub
A public design competition was called for a large-scale community town hub within a major public housing estate. This ‘one-stop community service centre’ involved the integration of community, sports, civic and commercial facilities within a 5.7Ha site.
WOHA’s key strategy was to approach the site with a club sandwich multi-zoning approach, by lifting the large footprint of the sports stadium and recreational facilities to the top and placing the commercial and civic facilities below. This approach not only minimised the building’s footprint and maximised space for facilities but also formed a giant urban umbrella over the entire development while opening up the ground level space to activity generating uses and effective additional park land. The layering arrangement also generated multiple ground levels of covered tropical outdoor spaces and provided dynamic visual links between the facilities/blocks.
The ground level was proposed to be a physical extension of the adjacent existing linear park, forming the Community Town Green – an uninterrupted pedestrianised ground plane that is fully open, physically connected and visually porous. The linear arrangement of the buildings were designed to act as wind funnels, assisted further by aerodynamically shaped block ends. This active combination of “Breezeway” + “Canopy” + Event Space” + “Atrium” collectively made up the comfortable tropical “Breezeway Atriums” at ground level, which served as the alternative sheltered tropical town square designed with a street-like quality and bazaar atmosphere.
At roof level, the 5,000 capacity outdoor stadium doubles up as the open air town square/community event space. This is supported by a concourse level directly below serving as a crowd holding area and the central zone where all common facilities are consolidated and shared. Hanging from this stadium roof are the indoor sports and recreational facilities, which are designed with a porous louvred facade for natural ventilation.