Ruchira's Portfolio - Level 04 DDP

The Village of Mechanics' - Level 4 DDP Project

Restoring the wetland existed in Kolonnawa, (Sri Lanka) area and Uplifting the lifestyles of Mechanics community which grown up based on Three-wheel repairs by introducing community houses based with garages. Addressing the fragility of the community and approaching a resilient solution with architecture.

The project is mainly based on upper part of Kolonnawa division. The proposal is to give back the land to wetlands which was existed before 50 years and extend the wetland coverage. At the same time there is a resettlement process in the same place itself while maintaining the same communal diversity. The procedure of relocating creates safe village clusters from climatic changes (mainly floods) as well as converts the low-density low-rise housing distribution to a high-density midrise distribution to free up more land. During this process there are environmental and social factors to be considered. Such as social security, economic levels, avoiding growth of underclass, floods, infrastructure, character of the area etc. According to the key idea derived from master plan level proposal, “Fragility to resilience” which mainly caters to the social fragility and the environmental fragility.

Model of a single village unit

Arrangement of Village clusters

House unit arrangement in a village

Ground level plan of a village unit

Middle court area

House units facing middle court

House units

Middle village

Design Rationale

Decentralizing the functions, whole village acts as a garage
Common space has been shared by every garage
Common space will be the park, vehicle park, recreational park of the community
Development of interactions between communities, when the sharing middle spaces, decentralizing the services and maintaining security
Eyes on the middle court increase the security of all the properties of the community, community will help each other to protect their belongings
Visual interactions between layers develop the social theories which assure the safety and activeness
Lower levels are public areas with garages. When come to the upper levels the privacy gradually increases and become private spaces (housing units)
Housing units are made up of three-unit types and, people can modify their houses by joining one or few housing units while following guidelines
Existing Diversity maintains while adding some outer families also, to make the society heterogeneous and to create role models and prevent a birth of an underclass ( Co-community is Three wheel mechanics and there are government savants, labours etc in 20%, doctors
At the temporary resettling phase people will offered by the original housing unit and they can develop it in their own way while following guild lines until the original village infrastructure comes to the finishing stage. (People are designers, so they can create openings, sound and heat insulations as in the same way which they do for vehicles)