URBAN QI

In Acupuncture, the bodily wellness is dependent on the balanced flow of an energy-like entity called Qi. The city exhibits similar qualities as the body. The project is a surgical and selective intervention into the urban environment to improve the fluidity of movement among people and automobiles, thus generating an area of healing that reaches beyond the building boundaries and extending to the entire neighborhood.

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The Convenience and Enrichment Center encourages the fluid movement and interaction among commuters and local residents, with continuous circulation path based on the tri-fold frame. The architecture facilitates and intimate relationship between the flow of pedestrians and automobiles. The intervention suggests urban acupuncture at a macro scale. However, the restoration of urban qi will ripple from streets to neighborhoods to city and to county level.